UKRAINE IS APPROACHING HOME STRETCH IN QUESTION OF AUTOCEPHALY—POROSHENKO
RIA Novosti, 17 September 2018
Ukraine has reached "the home stretch" in the question of receiving autocephaly and the resolution of this matter will help the unity of the country, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko declared during a meeting with the exarchs of the ecumenical patriarch in Kiev on Monday [17 September].
"We have traveled this path together, especially in the past three years, and within the context of this path now we can already say that we have reached the home stretch," Poroshenko said.
Poroshenko is trying to achieve the recognition of the uncanonical religious structures and the creation on their foundation of a united local autocephalous church in Ukraine, outside the framework of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. The Constantinople patriarchate previously reported that "within the context of preparation for granting autocephaly" it appointed its own exarchs in Kiev. This decision was sharply condemned by the Moscow patriarchate, which called it an intrusion into the canonical territory of another local church.
Patriarch of Moscow and all-Rus Kirill, at the opening of an extraordinary session of the Holy Synod in Moscow, reported that the exarchs of the Constantinople patriarchate had already arrived in Ukraine and begun work.
The synod of the Belorussian Orthodox Church (a part of the Russian Orthodox Church) condemned the uncanonical interference of Patriarch of Constantinople Bartholomew in the internal affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine and it made a separate statement in this regard. The Polish Orthodox Church urged not taking hasty decisions regarding the autocephaly of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Patriarch of Moscow and all-Rus Kirill compared the appointment by Constantinople of its exarchs in Ukraine to one of the most difficult periods of the church history of the 20th century. The Moscow patriarchate also does not see any prospects for the so-called council on autocephaly for Ukraine and it thinks that it will be able only to split Ukrainian society yet further, the head of the Department for External Church Relations of the RPTs, Metropolitan Ilarion, declared.
The Bishops' Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia was outraged by the decision of Patriarch Bartholomew to appoint in Kiev its own exarchs and it warned about the threat to the unity of world Orthodoxy. Metropolitan of Kiev and all-Ukraine Onufrey declared that the Constantinople patriarchate does not have the moral and canonical right to interfere in the affairs of Ukraine and to send its own exarchs into the country.
On Friday the synod of the Russian church made a virtual "breaking of diplomatic relations" with the Constantinople patriarchate after the latter appointed its exarchs to Ukraine, the canonical territory of the Moscow patriarchate. In particular, it decided to cease commemoration of Patriarch of Constantinople Bartholomew during patriarchal liturgies and to withdraw from bodies where representatives of the Constantinople patriarchate preside. Relations of the Russian church with Constantinople have been at such a crisis only once in all of its more than 1,000-year history. (tr. by PDS, posted 17 September 2018)
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