RUSSIAN CHURCH PROMISES RESPONSE TO APPOINTMENT BY PATRIARCH BARTHOLOMEW OF HIS EXARCHS IN UKRAINE
Interfax-Religiia, 7 September 2018
The Moscow patriarchate regards the appointment of exarchs of Constantinople in Ukraine as an unprecedentedly crude intrusion into its own territory and has declared that it will not be left without a response.
"The appointment by the Constantinople patriarch of his own representative bishops in Ukraine—without clearing it with the patriarch of Moscow and all-Rus and His Blessedness the Metropolitan of Kiev and all-Ukraine—is nothing other than an unprecedentedly crude intrusion onto the canonical territory of the Moscow patriarchate," Vladimir Legoida, the head of the synod's Department for Relations of Church with Society and News Media, declared Friday evening on social networks.
He said: "Such action cannot be left with a response."
The representative of the Russian church also expressed the hope that the Constantinople patriarchate will understand the seriousness of the possible consequences of its decisions.
"It is clear that there is some disagreement in our views on the situation, but I think that, as we have said many times, in both the Constantinople patriarchate and the Moscow patriarchate, they understand the importance of these processes and they understand the seriousness of possible consequences of any decisions. And we hope, and believe, and act on our part that these decisions will not lead to any sad consequences for everybody," V. Legoida noted today in the "Faith" radio broadcast.
Responding to a question of what believers do in this situation, he advised praying. "It is necessary here, of course, to have confidence in our hierarchy and to pray and see how events develop," V. Legoida said.
It was learned earlier today that the Constantinople patriarchate appointed two exarchs in Kiev "within the context of preparation for granting autocephaly to the Orthodox church in Ukraine." They are Archbishop of Pamphilon Daniel (U.S.A.) and Bishop of Edmonton Ilarion (Canada).
They both, as noted in a report by the representation of Constantinople in the World Council of Churches, "minister to Ukrainian Orthodox believers in their countries within the jurisdiction of the ecumenical patriarchate."
In Orthodoxy and Catholicism, exarch is the title of the head of a specific ecclesiastical district, located within the boundaries of a country, of a basic jurisdiction of a given local church.
The Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kiev Patriarchate arose as the result of a church schism in Ukraine in the early 1990s and is not recognized by canonical Orthodox churches.
On 17 April 2018, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko reported his intention to send to the patriarch of Constantinople a request to issue a tomos concerning a united local Orthodox church in Ukraine.
Some days ago, during a Synaxis (Bishops' Council) of the church of Constantinople in Istanbul, Patriarch Bartholomew declared that he is taking on himself the initiative for overcoming the Ukrainian schism, "since Russia, as the one responsible for the current unhealthy situation in Ukraine, is unable to solve the problem." The patriarch cited, as the reasons for this, requests from the Ukrainian government and the leader of the self-proclaimed "Kiev patriarchate."
Meanwhile, the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church is urging Patriarch Bartholomew not to go along with the current authorities of Ukraine. (tr. by PDS, posted 7 September 2018)
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