POROSHENKO: CONSTANTINOPLE CAN GIVE AUTOCEPHALY "WITHOUT TAKING MOSCOW'S OPINION INTO ACCOUNT"
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko declared that the ecumenical patriarch has decided to grant the right of the creation of a local church without taking into account "Moscow's opinion."
Yesterday the Ukrainian channel GromadskeTV reported that at a general assembly (synaxis) of the episcopate of Constantinople in Istanbul, the bishops decided that the Constantinople church is competent, without the agreement of other churches, to grant autocephaly to a church that asks for it. Such information is not on the official website of the Constantinople patriarchate. The final decision on such questions may be made by the synod, which will occur later.
"Yesterday, a decision was made about the right of the ecumenical patriarchate, without taking Moscow's opinion into account, to grant to all states—but Ukraine in the first place—the right to create a local conciliar Orthodox Ukrainian Church," Poroshenko said during a speech at the lineup at one of the schools in Kiev; Ukrainian television channels carried the broadcast.
Last week in Istanbul a meeting of Patriarch of Moscow Kirill with Patriarch of Constantinople Bartholomew was held. After the meeting, journalists posed the question to a participant in the conversation from the side of the Constantinople Orthodox Church, Metropolitan of Gaul Immanuel, about whether the topic of the church in Ukraine, whose autocephaly the Ukrainian authorities are seeking, was discussed. The metropolitan answered that the Constantinople patriarchate is trying to unite and not to divide world Orthodoxy. At the same time, Ukrainian news media reported that Bartholomew supposedly announced the decision of Constantinople to grant autocephaly to the church in Ukraine. The UPTsMP declared that this is false information, which distorts Immanuel's words. In his speech, Metropolitan Immanuel did not report in any way that the Constantinople patriarchate had supposedly made a decision to grant autocephaly to the church in Ukraine, the UPTs emphasized.
Poroshenko is trying to gain recognition of the uncanonical religious structures and of the creation on their base of a single local autocephalous church in Ukraine, outside of the framework of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. He declared earlier that the government will not interfere in internal church affairs, but at the same time he spoke again about the necessity of autocephaly for Ukraine.
The episcopate of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church responded to this that the issue is attempts by outside forces to turn the church into a composite of geopolitics, ideology, and state security, although this contradicts the vocation of the church. The UPTs is convinced that the church should not be an instrument in the hands of the government or political ideology, no matter where it comes from. The bishops predict that attempts to change the status of the church in Ukraine will deepen the schism in Orthodoxy and in society and will lead to the restriction of its rights and liberties. (tr. by PDS, posted 3 September 2018)
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