RUSSIA RELIGION NEWS


Moscow offended by Pompeo's favoring new Ukrainian church

METROPOLITAN ILARION BLAMES ENEMIES OF R.P.Ts. FOR BREAKDOWN OF HIS MEETING WITH POMPEO

Interfax-Religiia, 2 November 2019

 

The head of the Department for External Church Relations of the Moscow patriarchate, Metropolitan Ilarion, accused enemies of the Russian church for the fact that his meeting with American Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, scheduled for 22 October, did not occur.

 

"I think that we have a lot of people who wish us ill, who have good contacts with the State Department, and when our meeting was announced they took measures so that it would not happen," the metropolitan said on air on the program Church and World on the Rossiia-24 television channel.

 

He reported that he received an invitation to meet with the American secretary of state from members of the Antiochian Archdiocese of North America back in June. "I was not the initiator and I did not expect anything special from this meeting, but I gave my consent. There were suggested dates in August, but they did not suit me, and dates in September were proposed, but my September schedule was all filled. Then the office of the American secretary of state suggested three dates in October. I selected one of the three suggested dates since it was close to the celebration of the 125th anniversary of the mission of St. Raphael of Brooklyn and the 100th anniversary of the Antioch Council to which I had been invited by the Antiochians, the same ones who arranged this meeting," the metropolitan explained.

 

"Until the meeting was announced, nobody tried to prevent it," the RPTs hierarch noted. However, the day before the conversation, the State Department published Pompeo's schedule for the next day. "And, lo, on the next day in the morning I received a phone call from the State Department that the meeting would be held, but it would be one on one; but earlier it had been suggested that a representative of the Antioch church would also participate in this meeting. And then an hour before this meeting I received a call to the effect that instead of Pompeo, some one of his deputies would meet with me. Well, I refused this meeting," the metropolitan said.

 

According to the hierarch, the next day Pompeo met in ceremonial conditions with the leader of the Ukrainian schismatics, Epifany, who, according to news media reports, spoke about the violation of believers' rights in the Donbass and in Russian-occupied Crimea, and the secretary of state assured that the U.S.A. has supported, and will support the Ukrainian church, independent from the Russian Orthodox Church.

 

"Thus," Metropolitan Ilarion thinks, "Secretary of State Pompeo once again has confirmed the position of the U.S.A., which does not by any means consist in the noninterference in ecclesiastical affairs but entails direct interference in this matters, and it consists in the fact that the U.S.A. does not conceal its support for the project of Ukrainian autocephaly."

 

It is the opinion of the representative of the Russian church, in the context of this support, that his aborted meeting with the secretary of state does not occasion surprise. (tr. by PDS, posted 4 November 2019)


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