The rant between the Greek Orthodox Church based in Istanbul – regarded as the highest body in Orthodox Christianity – and the Russian Orthodox Church based in Moscow over the independence of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church escalated to a new level with the latter announcing a formal rebuff after a meeting of top priests.

"We have decided to suspend joint performance of church services with the hierarchs of the Constantinople Patriarchate, to suspend our membership in all structures, which are headed or co-chaired by the representatives of Constantinople," Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church's External Relations Department, said following an extraordinary meeting of the Holy Synod, the governing body of the Russian Orthodox Church, according to Russia Today.

Hilarion said that the move does not involve a complete rift between the churches and added that Moscow will not be participating in the work of some inter-church organizations.

Patriarch Kirill of Moscow terminated the commemoration of the Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople, but Eucharistic communion between the churches is not interrupted, according to the Holy Synod's decision carried by RIA.

The termination of the commemoration means that Patriarch Kirill will cease to pronounce the name of Bartholomew during the liturgy, that is, stop praying for him at the main service in the church. According to the ordinance of the patriarchal liturgy, several times during this service, they pray for the priests of all the local Orthodox churches of the world. According to the diptych – the list of these churches – recognized by the Russian Orthodox Church, today there are 15 in the world, and the Church of Constantinople, due to historical tradition, is first on this list.

The dispute between the two leading Orthodox churches erupted after the Fener Greek Patriarchate, internationally recognized as the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, decided to send two envoys to Ukraine.

The church in Ukraine has been tied to the Moscow Patriarchate for hundreds of years. But many Ukrainian parishes are rejecting the Moscow Patriarchate and have formed two separate churches that are pushing for recognition as a self-governing, or autocephalous, institution. There are currently three different Orthodox bodies in the country, namely the Ukrainian Orthodox Church tied to Moscow, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyivan Patriarchate and the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church.

In order for the churches to gain recognition, they need to be recognized either by Istanbul or at least half of other local Orthodox churches.

Calls for self-government have intensified since Moscow's 2014 annexation of the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine and its support for pro-Russia insurgents in eastern Ukraine.

Last week, those advocating self-government received a fillip when the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate said it was sending two bishops to Ukraine as a step toward declaring ecclesiastical independence for the church there.

The move by Patriarch Bartholomew I, who is considered the "first among equals" of Eastern Orthodox clerics, followed a meeting last month with Russian Orthodox Church's head, Patriarch Kirill, which failed to narrow their differences.

Patriarch Kirill strongly condemned the move during the opening of Friday's meeting of the Holy Synod, comparing it to the Ecumenical Patriarchate's actions during the split in the Russian Orthodox Church in the 1920s.

Metropolitan Onufriy, the head of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church that answers to Moscow Patriarchate, told the Holy Synod via a video call that the bishops sent by Bartholomew I had already arrived in Ukraine and established contacts with the heads of the Ukrainian Orthodoxy.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has urged the Istanbul-based Patriarchate to grant Ukrainian Orthodox clerics full ecclesiastical independence from Moscow.

Russian President Vladimir Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters Friday that "worrying information about possible decisions regarding the church in Ukraine causes concern."

Peskov noted that "the state can't interfere in the church affairs," but added that "preservation of the Orthodox unity is the only preferable scenario for Moscow, as well as for the entire Orthodox world."

Nikolai Danilyevich, the external relations secretary of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, said Friday that they learned Istanbul's move to appoint two envoys from online sources and this unilateral move will cause various problems for the Orthodox Christians in Ukraine.

Danilyevich said that they respect the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate but it had not acted as the patriarchate should have been acting. "All local Orthodox churches are worried of Fener Greek Patriarchate's actions on Ukraine. This will have no benefit for anyone, but grave problems," he said.

Meanwhile, Bishop Zorya Evstratiy, spokesperson for the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyivan Patriarchate told the official Ukrinform agency that the envoys from Istanbul will complete their work regarding Kiev's independence at their Holy Synod gathering set to be held between Oct. 9 and 11.

He described Moscow's previous statement that they could sever ties with the Greek Orthodox Church as a "declaration of war, ultimatum and threat," stating they could only do so in a limited way. </s> The granting of autocephaly to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew is “a secular event,” Chancellor of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Ukrainian Orthodox Church Metropolitan Antoniy (Pakanych) said.

“I would like to emphasize that the Christian holiday should not be outshined by a certain secular event. There were a lot of such events in our history. So, those events, which were believed to be great some time ago, then became shameful both for the church history and for those people, who signed that sort of documents,” he said at a press briefing in Kyiv on Sunday.

The documents that have been earlier signed caused some problems to the Christians, the metropolitan said.

“Various documents were signed, both unions and tomos, but all of this unfortunately very often caused some difficulties in the life to the Christians, and only those people, who deal with the church history, are aware of them now,” he said.

On October 11, 2018, the Constantinople Patriarchate’s Synod in Istanbul invalidated its decree of 1686 on the transfer of the Kyiv Metropolinate to Moscow, declared the creation of a metochion in Kyiv, and rehabilitated the leaders of the self-proclaimed Orthodox Churches in Ukraine. In response, the Synod of the Moscow Patriarchate declared the full severance of relations with Constantinople.

On January 5, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew signed a tomos granting autocephaly to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine at the St. George’s Cathedral in Istanbul. </s> The Ecumenical Patriarchate has decided that it has every right to provide autocephaly without agreement from other churches.

President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko wrote this on Twitter, Ukrainian News Agency reports.

"The Ecumenical Patriarchate has endorsed a decision about the right of the Ecumenical Patriarch to provide all countries with the right to create local churches without taking into consideration the opinion of Moscow. This concerns Ukraine first of all and its right to create the local composite Ukrainian Orthodox Church," he wrote.

As Ukrainian News Agency earlier reported, on September 1, 2018, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate denied that Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I had informed Patriarch Kirill of Moscow about the decision to provide autocephaly to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. </s> The Istanbul-based Ecumenical Patriarchate says it will move forward with its decision to grant Ukrainian clerics independence from the Russian Orthodox Church.

The decision was announced Thursday following a regular holy synod meeting.

Ukraine has asked Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, seen by many as the first among equals of Eastern Orthodox leaders, to make the Ukrainian church autocephalous.

The church has been tied to the Moscow Patriarchate for hundreds of years, although many parishes have split off over the past two decades to form a schismatic church. Calls for independence have increased since Moscow's 2014 annexation of the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine.

The Russian Orthodox Church has warned that it will sever ties with Bartholomew if he grants Ukraine's church autonomy. </s> "I congratulate everyone on setting up the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church which has been just created at St. Sophia’s," he said addressing the crowd in Sofiyskaya Square after the end of the ‘unification’ council.

Metropolitan Epiphany of Pereyaslav and Belotserkovsk, who had earlier served as a bishop of the uncanonical Kiev Patriarchate, was elected head of the new church.

Poroshenko recalled the words of Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko, saying: "As Taras Shevchenko once said Ukraine would not be drinking Moscow’s poison from the Moscow cup."

‘Unification’ council

On Saturday, the St. Sophia’s Cathedral in Kiev hosted a so-called ‘unification’ council held under the auspices of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople and brokered by the Ukrainian authorities.

The council pursued a goal of creating a new local Orthodox Church estranged from the Moscow Patriarchate. The church will be formally granted an autocephalous status, but in fact, it will be under the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. The council was expected to consider two main issues, namely the new church’s charter and the election of its head.

The organizers planned that representatives of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church and two schismatic groups, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Kiev Patriarchate and the Ukrainian Autocephalous Church, will attend the council. Nonetheless, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church turned the invitation down lashing out at the council as illegitimate. On December 7, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church’s Holy Synod said that the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople had no canonical right to convene any church meetings in Ukraine and that "neither the clergy nor the laity have been authorized to represent the Ukrainian Orthodox Church at that meeting."

On Saturday, only two from 90 archbishops of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church attended the assembly. They are Metropolitan Alexander (Drabinko) of Pereyaslav-Khmelnitsky and Vyshnevsky and Metropolitan Simeon of Vinnitsa and Barsky.

Church crisis in Ukraine

Kiev has attempted to create a Local Orthodox Church in Ukraine independent of the Moscow Patriarchate since 1991. In April 2018, Poroshenko wrote a personal letter to Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople asking for autocephaly for the Ukrainian church.

The Holy and Sacred Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople decided at its meeting held on October 9-11 to proceed with granting autocephaly to the Ukrainian Church. It revoked the 1686 decision on transferring the Kiev Metropolitanate under the jurisdiction of the Moscow Patriarchate and announced plans to bring it back under the jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. It also reinstated the heads of two non-canonical churches in Ukraine, Filaret of the Kiev Patriarchate and Makariy of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Church, to their hierarchical and priestly ranks.

On October 15, the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church said in response to that move that full communion with the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople was no longer possible.

On November 13, the Council of Bishops of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church held its meeting in Kiev Pechersk Lavra (the Kiev Monastery of the Caves). The Ukrainian Orthodox Church announced after the meeting it did not recognize Constantinople’s decisions on Ukraine and said it was severing full communion with the Ecumenical Patriarchate. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church also spoke out against joining the process of granting autocephaly to Ukraine’s church and said it opposed its name change.

On December 5, Poroshenko announced that the so-called unification council to create the Ukrainian autocephalous church would take place on December 15. He said that Patriarch Bartholomew had sent letters to bishops of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kiev Patriarchate, the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church and the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church "inviting them to take part in that historic event.". </s> The Ecumenical Patriarchate has granted self-rule, also known as autocephaly, to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

 

 The decision was reached during a meeting of the Holy Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate and published on the Patriarchate's website.

 

 The Synod decreed to “renew the decision already made that the Ecumenical Patriarchate proceed to the granting of Autocephaly to the Church of Ukraine.”

 

 The Synod also decreed to “reestablish, at this moment, the Stavropegion of the Ecumenical Patriarch in Kyiv, one of its many Stavropegia in Ukraine that existed there always.”

 

 Stavropegia are subordinated directly to the Patriarchate, rather than to a local bishop.

 

 It also decided to “accept and review the petitions of appeal of Filaret Denisenko, Makariy Maletych and their followers, who found themselves in schism not for dogmatic reasons, in accordance with the canonical prerogatives of the Patriarch of Constantinople to receive such petitions by hierarchs and other clergy from all of the Autocephalous Churches.”

 

 “Thus, the above-mentioned have been canonically reinstated to their hierarchical or priestly rank, and their faithful have been restored to communion with the Church,” it said. </s> The Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople has agreed to recognize the independence of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, a move immediately hailed by Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko but slammed as "catastrophic" by Moscow.

A synod meeting in Istanbul chaired by Patriarch Bartholomew I, who is considered the leader of the 300 million-strong worldwide Orthodox community, or "first among equals" of Eastern Orthodox clerics, decided on October 11 to "proceed to the granting of Autocephaly to the Church of Ukraine."

The synod, however, made sure to warn against violence and attempted property takeovers.



The move, which comes amid a deepening row in Orthodox Christianity over the Ukrainian Church's bid to formally break away from Russia's orbit, was hailed by President Petro Poroshenko as "something that we have dreamed of, waited for a long time, and fought for all the time."

But the Russian Orthodox Church condemned the decision as "catastrophic."

"Today the Patriarchate of Constantinople has made catastrophic decisions -- first and foremost regarding itself and global Orthodoxy," a spokesman for Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill, Aleksandr Volkov, said in televised remarks. "The Patriarchate of Constantinople has crossed a red line."

Earlier, Kirill was quoted as saying that his church will "have to break eucharistical relations with Constantinople" following the decision.

Ukraine currently has three Orthodox denominations: the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate (UOC+MP), which remained subordinate to Russia after the breakup of the Soviet Union; and two breakaway entities -- the now-recognized Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyiv Patriarchate (UOC+KP), and the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (UAOC).

The three are nearly indistinguishable in terms of their rituals but differ when it comes to the issue of church independence. And, along with the Russian church, they each trace their history to the ancient medieval state of Rus in Kyiv.

The Kyiv Patriarchate is headed by 89-year-old Patriarch Filaret, who was once a front-runner to head the Russian Orthodox Church. Filaret, who was excommunicated as Ukraine gained independence from the Soviet Union and he pushed for an independent Ukrainian church was reinstated, together with Kyiv Metropolitan Makariy -- who heads the UAOC -- to their canonical ranks, in another key move by the synod.

"Thus, the above-mentioned have been canonically reinstated to their hierarchical or priestly rank," said the statement.

Following Bartholomew's decision, Filaret said he would call a council with the leadership of the UAOC to choose a leader of a united autocephalous church of Ukraine. He said the Moscow-loyal UOC-MP representatives can attend if they desire.



"Moscow wants that there would be resistance, but we, Ukrainians, don't want resistance," he told a news conference.



The Ecumenical Patriarchate's move also marks a significant triumph for Poroshenko and his reelection hopes in March 2019.

"The decision made by the Ecumenical Patriarch and the synod has definitively dispelled Moscow's imperial delusions and chauvinist fantasies -- which had no support in any church-law documents -- on Ukraine as an allegedly canonical territory of the Russian [Orthodox] Church," Poroshenko said in a televised address.



There are concerns that the move could stoke tension and violence.

The Kyiv Patriarchate has already laid claim to the famous 11th century Kyiv Monastery of the Caves and the Holy Dormition Monastery in Pochayiv. Both are in the hands of the Russian-dominated Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

That is probably why Bartholomew appealed to all sides involved "that they avoid appropriation of Churches, Monasteries and other properties, as well as every other act of violence and retaliation, so that the peace and love of Christ may prevail," according to the statement.

The Ecumenical Patriarch, currently Bartholomew I, also holds the title of archbishop of Constantinople, the old Greek name for Istanbul, Turkey's largest city. The city fell to the Muslim Turks in 1453 but has remained the historic seat of Christian Orthodoxy.

​

With reporting by AFP, AP, and TASS </s> The Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople has decided to begin the creation of an autocephalous Orthodox Church in Ukraine. The move comes despite warnings against it from the Russian Orthodox Church.- the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate. As the name implies, it's a largely autonomous church, which nevertheless answers to the Russian Orthodox Church.The Patriarchate of Constantinople intends to unilaterally declare recognition of a separate canonical church in Ukraine, although details of such an action are yet to be clarified. The conclave of its Synod took some decisions furthering such a policy.Among the decisions taken on Thursday was, in which Constantinople acknowledged the right of the Russian Orthodox Church to ordain the Metropolitan of Kyiv after his election by clerics of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.The Synod also decided to re-establish the office of the Stavropegion of the Ecumenical Patriarch in Kyiv. The term means thatThe announcement by Constantinople was criticized by the Russian Orthodox Church, which called it the "legalization of the schism.""The actions of Constantinople cross the red line and deal a catastrophic blow to the unity of the global Orthodoxy," said Aleksandr Volkov, spokesman for Patriarch Kirill, the head of the church.Vladimir Legoyda, who chairs the Church's public relations department, called the decisionsHe added that the reaction to Constantinople's move will be discussed by the Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church next Monday.Volkov said that Moscow will now have to declare that it is no longer in communion with Constantinople, since the latter decided to treat Filaret and Makariy as clerics. This means that priests of the two patriarchies will no longer be able to conduct religious services together. Moscow has already taken a step that amounts to breaking diplomatic ties with Constantinople in response to its Ukrainian activities.Filaret praised the decision, saying it brings closer the creation of a single Ukrainian church independent from Moscow. His recognition as a legitimate cleric by one of the canonical Orthodox churches probably boosts the chances of him heading such a church one day., promised that Kiev would respect the people, who would choose to stay part of the Moscow-linked church.owned by the Ukrainian Orthodox Church by the schismatic churches.The Synod in Constantinople is aware of such concerns. In its announcement, it appealed "to all sides" to "avoid appropriation of churches, monasteries and other properties, as well as every other act of violence and retaliation."The Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople is considered "first among equals" with regard to Orthodox churches around the world due to its historic significance. Its decisions however are not binding for other churches.There are some churches recognized by Moscow, but not Constantinople, and vice-versa Orthodox believers in Ukraine used to be part of Constantinople's 'spiritual territory, 'but the Kievan metropolis was transferred to Moscow's jurisdiction by Dionysius IV in 1686. </s> The Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church decided earlier in the day that Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia will cease commemoration of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople, but full communion between the churches will not be suspended yet.

The move is a response to the Constantinople Patriarchate appointing its exarchs to Ukraine as "part of preparation to grant autocephaly to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church."

"The war of the Patriarchate of Constantinople against the Moscow one continues for almost a hundred years… Today history repeats itself. Again, as in the time of Patriarch Tikhon, they send their exarchs to us, supposedly to heal the split, but in fact to legitimize it, with a view for the subsequent split of the Ukrainian Church from the Moscow Patriarchate. The same logic is traced: the use of a difficult situation not for the brotherly support, but for weakening the Russian Church by detaching certain parts from it," Metropolitan Hilarion wrote on Facebook.

In April, Poroshenko said that Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople was launching the procedures required to establish the Autocephalous Church in Ukraine. The Russian Orthodox Church condemned the move, saying that the anti-canonical measures in Ukraine threatened to split the Orthodoxy.

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The Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople plans to recognize the autocephaly of two Ukrainian Orthodox Churches, a move welcomed by Ukrainian leaders and denounced as "catastrophic" by the Russian Orthodox Church.