R.P.Ts.
COMMENTS ON
GREEK CHURCH DECISION ON AUTOCEPHALY OF UKRAINE
The
deputy head of
the Department for External Church Relations of the Moscow
patriarchate,
Archpriest Nikolai Balashov, commented on the decision of the
Council of the
Greek church with regard to the uncanonical Orthodox Church of
Ukraine.
"Despite
the
reasonable suggestions of a number of metropolitans to refrain
for now from
making a decision, the Bishops' Council of the Greek church
adopted a decision
in favor of recognizing the PTsU, while strangely expressing the
hope that
Ukrainian "autocephaly" will help "to strengthen relations
between
the autocephalous churches of Great Russia and Ukraine."
An
assessment of the
consequences of this decision for relations between the Russian
Orthodox Church
and the Greek church will be made by the Holy Synod of the
Moscow
patriarchate," Balashov told RIA Novosti.
At the
same time he
recalled that in contrast with the Greek church, whose
jurisdiction does not
even include all the territory of Greece, the Russian Orthodox
Church is
multi-national and is by no means restricted in its pastoral
care to believers
residing on the territory of Russia.
"In
particular,
tens of millions of its members are citizens of Ukraine. And
they have not
asked for any autocephaly," the news agency's source noted.
Today
an
extraordinary session of the Bishops' Council of the Greek
church was held, at
which the question of the "new church" of Ukraine was discussed.
As
follows from the decision, the council recognized that Patriarch
of
Constantinople Bartholomew can grant autocephaly and it
transferred to Archbishop
of Athens and all-Greece Ieronymos the right to decide the
question of
recognizing the autocephaly of Ukraine. Archbishop Ieronymos
himself spoke in
favor of the recognition of the PTsU.
The
so-called
Orthodox Church of Ukraine is an uncanonical structure that is
not recognized
by world Orthodoxy. It was created in late 2018 on the
initiative of the
Ukrainian government and the patriarchate of Constantinople by
means of the
merger of two schismatic churches. After receiving from
Patriarch Bartholomew a
tomos concerning autocephaly, in reality the PTsU found itself
almost
completely dependent upon Constantinople. Thus far not a single
local church
has recognized the new structure. The only canonical church in
Ukraine remains
the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate
(UPTsMP). (tr. by PDS,
posted 12 October 2019)
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