Source: Orthodox Synaxis The recent controversy over the Orthodox Church in Ukraine has been the subject of a lot of confusion, especially online. The following questions and answers attempt to clear up confusion in a non-partisan way that does not take sides in the dispute. Updates will be added whenever new information comes to light, so check back periodically. LAST UPDATED DEC. 10, 2018 Who are the players in the current dispute and what is being disputed? The primary parties in the dispute are the Russian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate, MP), led by Patriarch Kyrill, and the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople (EP),…
Browsing: Constantinople
Source: RT News n the biggest rift in modern Orthodox history, the Russian Orthodox Church has cut all ties with the Constantinople Patriarchate, after it accepted a breakaway division of Ukrainian Orthodox Church as independent. The Holy Synod, the governing body of the Russian Orthodox Church, has ruled that any further clerical relations with Constantinople are impossible, Metropolitan Hilarion, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church’s External Relations Department, told journalists, de facto announcing the breach of relations between the two churches. “A decision about the full break of relations with the Constantinople Patriarchate has been taken at a Synod…
Source: Bloomberg As Ukraine’s church moves toward independence, the Russian president could lose his role of defender of the faith. By Leonid Bershidsky The Eastern Orthodox Church is closer than ever to a schism that would cast Russian President Vladimir Putin in a role similar to that of King Henry VIII when he split the Church of England from Rome in the 16th century. Russia’s ambition to be the center of the Orthodox world threatens to end in isolation. But holding back from splitting the church will mean humiliation by the Ukrainians, who have been ruthlessly terrorized by the Russian leader. On…
Source: Pravda The agreements of 300 years have been cast aside. Constantinople wants to break the spine of Orthodoxy and make Ukraine hostile to Russia forever. However, it is up to common people – Ukrainian Christians – to make their final decision. On October 11, the Synod of the Constantinople Patriarchate made the following decisions (briefly): 1. To confirm the decision that the Ecumenical Patriarchate proceeds to provide autocephaly to the Church of Ukraine. 2. To restore the stauropegion of the Ecumenical Patriarch in Kiev. 3. To accept and consider the appeals from Filaret Denisenko and Macary Maletich for the…
Source: ECUMENICAL PATRIARCHATE PERMANENT DELEGATION TO THE WORLD COUNCIL OF CHURCHES The Permanent Representative of the Ecumenical Patriarchate to the WCC, Archbishop Job of Telmessos, gave the following interview to Marina Ziosiou of the Greek newspaper “Ethnos of Sunday” about the ecclesiastical issue of autocephaly of Ukraine: The hierarch points out that the Patriarchate of Moscow rejects any dialogue and states that it is strange that Orthodox Ukrainians do not want to be under the jurisdiction of Kiev. Archbishop Job of Telmessos, Permanent Representative of the Ecumenical Patriarchate to the World Council of Churches gives his own point of view on the…
Source: The New York Times By Neil MacFarquhar MOSCOW — Vyacheslav Gorshkov, who teaches the catechism at a Kiev cathedral, was among the majority of Orthodox Christians in Ukraine who had reconciled themselves to the fact that their church answers to the Russian Orthodox patriarch in Moscow. No longer. Mr. Gorshkov does not want to break with the faith, but does want to split with the Russian Orthodox Church, incensed by what he sees as the Kremlin using the church as an instrument of its old imperial control. He is among the majority of the faithful hoping that Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew…
Source: Orthodoxia ORTHODOXIA.INFO | Andreas Loudaros In an exclusive, orthodoxia.info reveals Constantinople and Moscow’s respective arguments and the points of conflict between the two Churches vis-à-vis the Ukraine issue, publishing part of the heated debate which took place between Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew and Patriarch Kirill during their meeting at the Phanar last August. For three hours the two Primates discussed the issues currently separating their Churches, from the Ukraine question and the Russian Church’s absence from the Holy and Great Synod in Crete, to Moscow’s position on inter-Christian dialogue. As revealed from the talks, the Ecumenical Patriarchate believes Ukraine does…
Source: Catholic Herald Tensions over Ukraine threaten to tear apart the world’s 300 million Orthodox Christians For centuries, the archbishops of Constantinople could credibly claim to be the “Ecumenical Patriarch”. Their see was the “New Rome”, centre of the oikoumenē, the “inhabited world”. Today, their successor, Patriarch Bartholomew, looks beleaguered. The guards around his residence in the Phanar quarter of Istanbul reveal his threatened position in an increasingly Islamified Turkey. But now he seems poised to gain other powerful enemies, this time within the Orthodox Church itself, by unilaterally recognising a Ukrainian Orthodox Church independent of Moscow. The renascent Church…
Source: Hurriyet Daily News WASHINGTON The United States said in a statement on Sept. 25 that it supports Fener Greek OrthodoxPatriarch Dimitri Bartholomew’s stance on granting independence to the Ukrainian Church. U.S. State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert said in a statement that the U.S. supports the freedom of groups “to govern their religion according to their beliefs and practice their faiths freely without government interference.” “The United States respects the ability of Ukraine’s Orthodox religious leaders and followers to pursue autocephaly according to their beliefs. We respect the Ecumenical Patriarch [Dimitri Bartholomew] as a voice of religious tolerance and interfaith dialogue,” she added. Nauert reiterated her country’s “unwavering…
Source: Orthodox Christianity Recently, there has appeared in the media as well as in social networks information that the Greek consulate in Moscow is refusing to issue visas to Russian priests or is offering not three-year visas, as they do to tourists, but visas for only one month or even only for a few days. The first to write about the visa problem on his Facebook page was the rector of the Moscow State University Church of St. Tatiana, Fr. Vladimir Vigilyansky. At the end of May, he received a Greek visa: His wife was given a three-year visa but…
Source: Orthodox Christianity An Exclusive Interview on the Ecclesiastical Events in Ukraine In this interview with the program “Morning With Inter,” His Beatitude Metropolitan Onuphry speaks about his position on the latest Church events connected with the actions of the Patriarchate of Constantinople in regard to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. The Ukrainian primate calls on the people of Ukraine to fear nothing, to preserve the purity of the Orthodox faith, and to live with God. Today we are being dragged into the format of a political party, so that Christ would not lead us, but politicians. If I had wanted…
Source: DECR Communication Service The Statement was adopted at an extraordinary session of the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church on 14 September 2018 (Minutes No. 69). With profound regret and sorrow the Holy Synod the Russian Orthodox Church learned about the statement made by the Holy Synod of the Orthodox Church of Constantinople concerning the appointment of its two “exarchs” to Kiev. This decision was taken without an agreement with the Primate of the Russian Orthodox Church and His Beatitude Metropolitan Onufry of Kiev and All Ukraine – the only canonical head of the Orthodox Church in Ukraine. It…