UAPTs ASKS TO JOIN CONSTANTINOPLE PATRIARCHATE
The Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (UAPTs), which is not recognized by world Orthodoxy, appealed to the ecumenical patriarch requesting to be made a member of the Constantinople patriarchate, the website of the Carpathian UAPTs diocese says.
Earlier, the Verkhovna Rada [Supreme Soviet] sent a request to Patriarch of Constantinople Bartholomew to recognize the independence of the Ukrainian church from the Moscow patriarchate .The UAPTs declared support for this appeal.
"On the basis of the results of its session, the Bishops' Council of the UAPTs has resolved specifically: to send to His Holiness Bartholomew, Archbishop of Constantinople, a request--with the goal of consolidating all of Orthodoxy on the territory of Ukraine, overcoming of the division of Ukrainian Orthodox believers, and confirming a single local autocephalous Ukrainian Orthodox Church—that the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church be taken into membership of the Constantinople Mother-Church, with the rights of the Ukrainian church with its metropolitan center in Kiev prior to 1686, and in accordance with the decisions of the council on the island of Cyprus [sic—Crete?, tr.] in 2016 regarding granting churches autonomous status," the appeal says.
At the present time, the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UPTs), which is a self-administering church within the Moscow patriarchate, operates in Ukraine, along with church structures that are not recognized by world Orthodoxy—the Kiev patriarchate and the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (UAPTs).
At the same time, religious studies scholar Roman Lunkin, who is the director of the Center for the Study of Problems of Religion and Society of the Institute of Europe of the Russian Academy of Sciences, says that the UAPTs has no more than 1,000 parishes, while the largest Orthodox church in Ukraine, the UPtsMP, has 11-12 thousand parishes and the unrecognized UPTsKP has about 3,000. (tr. by PDS, posted 11 July 2016)
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