The Russian Orthodox Church has announced it will break off relations with the Patriarchate of Constantinople in a religious schism driven by political friction between Russia and Ukraine.

The Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church elected on Monday to cut ties with the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, which is viewed as the leading authority for the world’s 300 million Orthodox worshippers.

The split is a show of force by Russia after a Ukrainian church was granted independence.

Last week Bartholomew I of Constantinople, the “first among equals” of eastern Orthodox clerics, granted autocephaly (independence) to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which previously answered to Moscow.

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If Monday’s decision is a lasting one, the loss of the powerful and wealthy Russian church will be a serious blow to the global church. It also marks an important new facet for the rift between Russia and Ukraine, who have become bitter enemies since the annexation of Crimea and the war in Donbass.

Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, the Moscow patriarchate’s head of external church relations, announced the Russian church’s decision on Monday and said Russia hoped the Patriarchate of Constantinople would change its mind.

“Until that happens, until all these unlawful decisions made by Constantinople are in force, we won’t be able to communicate with the church which today finds itself in the midst of a schism,” he said, according to reports of his remarks.

The global Orthodox churches collectively represent 300 million people. But there are fewer than 3,000 of the Orthodox faithful in Istanbul.

The Russian Orthodox Church represents a majority of Orthodox Christians and commands huge wealth and power. Its leader, Patriarch Kirill, is closely allied to Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, who he has described as “a miracle of God”.

Rivalry between the Russian church and patriarch of Constantinople has been a feature of eastern Orthodoxy. Kirill has objected to Bartholomew’s close relationship with the Roman Catholic church and Pope Francis.

Ukraine’s government had lobbied strongly for autocephaly as part of a larger break from Russian influence in the country’s affairs.

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“Autocephaly is part of our pro-European and pro-Ukrainian state strategy,” the Ukrainian president, Petro Poroshenko, said in a statement last week. He also called Moscow’s loss of control over the Ukrainian Orthodox Church “the fall of the ‘third Rome’ as the most ancient conceptual claim of Moscow for the global domination”.

Russia’s Orthodox Church already had a tense relationship with the religious authorities in Istanbul.

In the summer of 2016 the first global gathering of the 14 self-governing Orthodox churches since the year 787 almost collapsed before it opened because of disagreements over the agenda. Several churches – including the Russians – threatened to boycott the “holy and great council”, which had been 55 years in the planning.

The Patriarch of Constantinople has sought to repair relations with the Roman Catholic church, which broke from eastern Orthodoxy almost a millennium ago, in 1054. </s> Officials from the Russian Orthodox Church have announced that the church is severing relations with the Patriarchate of Constantinople, in what is being seen as one of the biggest schisms in Orthodox Christianity in almost a thousand years.

At a synod in Belarus on Monday, Russian Orthodox Church leaders said the church was cutting ties with the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, the seat of the global spiritual leader for 300 million Orthodox worshippers.

The rupture is a response by the Russian Church over the Constantinople Patriarchate’s decision last week to recognize the Ukrainian Orthodox Church as an independent church -- no longer under the authority of the Moscow Patriarchate, according to church officials.

Bartholomew I of Constantinople, considered the ‘first among equals’ of eastern Orthodoxy’s church leaders, granted what is known as ‘autocephaly’ (self-governance) to the Ukrainian Church, over the fierce objections of Moscow.

Metropolitan Ilarion, the Moscow Patriarchate’s head of external relations, on Tuesday said that in doing so the Constantinople Patriarchate had destroyed its authority and that the Orthodox Church no longer had a single center.

“We now stand before a new church reality: we no longer have a single coordinating center in the Orthodox Church and we must very clearly recognize that,” Ilarion said in a televised interview on Russia’s main state broadcaster, Channel 1.

“The Constantinople Patriarchate liquidated itself as such a center,” he said.

The split marks a historic turning point for the global Orthodox community, but it is the result of the collapse in relations between Russia and Ukraine of the past four years that followed Moscow's seizure of Crimea in 2014 and the subsequent separatist war in eastern Ukraine, which is ongoing.

Ukraine’s government has lobbied for an independent church on the grounds that the Russian Orthodox Church is an instrument of the Kremlin, accusing it of stoking separatist sentiment in eastern Ukraine and of acting on behalf of Russia's intelligence services.

Bartholomew’s decision recognized a Ukrainian church that had sought to break from the Moscow Patriarchate since 1991, when Ukraine gained independence from the Soviet Union. Ukraine’s government hailed the recognition as major step in bringing Ukraine further out of Russian dominion.

“This is a matter of our independence," Ukraine’s president Petro Poroshenko said in a speech celebrating the recognition on October 11. "A matter of our national security. A matter of our statehood. A matter of the entire global geopolitics.”

“This is the fall of the ‘Third Rome’ as the most ancient conceptual claim of Moscow for global domination,” Poroshenko said, referring to a claim made by Russian nationalists for centuries that the country is the heir to the Roman and Byzantine Christian empires. f

The Moscow Patriarchate, however, has denounced the Ukrainian church’s recognition as provoking a split comparable to the so-called ‘Great Schism’ of 1054, when Christianity separated into western and eastern churches.

The Russian church is by far the largest of the world’s Orthodox communities and for most of its centuries-long history has been closely tied to the Russian state. President Vladimir Putin has promoted the church as a key part of modern Russian identity and its leader, Patriarch Kirill, is a close ally of the Russian leader.

The Russian church's breakaway is therefore a major upheaval for global Orthodoxy. The practical implications were still being worked out by ecclesiastical experts on Tuesday, but Russian church officials suggested the most immediate effect would be that its faithful should no longer attend services at churches under the authority of Constantinople. That would include one of the holiest sites in Orthodoxy, the Greek island monastery, Mount Athos.

Archpriest Igor Yakimchuk, the Moscow Patriarchate’s deputy head of external relations, told the Interfax news agency that Russian worshippers visiting those churches, many of which are popular tourist sites in Greece and Turkey, would have to make penance with confession afterwards, but church officials seemed to suggest there is no total ban. Russian Orthodox priests are now forbidden from taking part in services there and would be punished, Yakimchuk said.

The Moscow Patriarchate and Constantinople have had strained relations for some time as Moscow has sought to expand its authority within Orthodoxy. In 2016, Patriarch Kirill met Pope Francis in Cuba, the first time a Russian Orthodox patriarch and a Roman Catholic Pope have done so in 1,000 years -- in what was seen by some experts as a power play by the Russian church. </s> MOSCOW (AP) — The Russian Orthodox Church decided Monday to sever ties with the leader of the worldwide Orthodox community after his decision to grant Ukrainian clerics independence from the Moscow Patriarchate.

Metropolitan Hilarion said the Russian church's Holy Synod resolved to "''break the Eucharistic communion" with the Istanbul-based Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople.

Under the leadership of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, the patriarchate last week removed its condemnation of leaders of schismatic Orthodox churches in Ukraine. The decision marked a step toward establishing an ecclesiastically independent - or autocephalous - church in Ukraine.

The Orthodox Church in Ukraine has been under the jurisdiction of the Russian Orthodox Church since the late 1600s. Calls for the Ukrainian church's independence have increased since Moscow's 2014 annexation of the Crimean Peninsula and its support of separatist rebels fighting in eastern Ukraine.

Ukraine currently has three Orthodox communities - one answering to the Russian Orthodox Church and two schismatic churches.

Metropolitan Hilarion, who heads the Russian Orthodox Church's foreign relations department, said after the Holy Synod's meeting in Minsk, Belarus on Monday that rupturing ties with the Ecumenical Patriarchate was a response to its "lawless and canonically void moves."

"The Russian Orthodox Church doesn't recognize those decisions and won't fulfill them," he said. "The church that acknowledged the schismatics has excluded itself from the canonical field of the Orthodoxy."

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, who is running for re-election in a March vote, has pushed Bartholomew to grant independence to the Ukrainian church.

Ukrainian Orthodox Church Archbishop Yevstratiy denounced the Holy Synod's decision to sever ties with the Orthodox Church leader regarded as a "first among equals" as a move toward "self-isolation."

The Russian church voiced concern that the Istanbul-based patriarchate's action would deepen the religious rift in Ukraine and could spur the schismatic branches to try to take over church buildings.

The Russian Orthodox Church expects Poroshenko to make good on his pledge that the Ukrainian government would ensure respect for the choices of those who want to retain unity with the Russian church.

Yuras Karmanau in Minsk, Belarus contributed to this report. </s> 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 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> 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.

READ MORE: Politics Out of Religion: Polish Orthodox Bishops Reject Kiev Bid for Self-Rule </s> Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I (front, center) stands with Orthodox clergy at The Hagia Triada Greek Orthodox church Sept. 2 in Istanbul, during the second day of meetings that led to the patriarch recognizing the identity of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. The move led to the Russian Orthodox Church breaking from the Greek Orthodox Church. (OZAN KOSE/AFP/Getty Images)

“The Russian Orthodox Church doesn’t recognize those decisions and won’t fulfill them,” Archbishop Hilarion Alfeyev said in Belarus after a meeting of the synod of the Russian Orthodox Church.

KIEV, Ukraine — The Russian Orthodox Patriarchate of Moscow has cut ties with the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew I, claiming his recognition of an independent Orthodox Church in Ukraine departed from Orthodox Christian norms.

Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev, who heads foreign relations for the Russian Orthodox Church, said Russian Orthodox leaders decided to “break the Eucharistic communion” in response to actions it called “lawless and canonically void.”

“The Russian Orthodox Church doesn’t recognize those decisions and won’t fulfill them,” Archbishop Hilarion said in Belarus after a meeting of the synod of the Russian Orthodox Church.

“The Church that acknowledged the schismatics has excluded itself from the canonical field of Orthodoxy.”

“We are hoping common sense will prevail and that the Constantinople Patriarchate will change its relations to existing Church reality,” Metropolitan Hilarion said.

Patriarch Bartholomew’s plan to create a single, self-governing Church in the Ukraine, led by its own patriarch, is motivated by a desire to unify the country’s 30 million Orthodox Christians, some observers say. The Russian Church sees the move as an infringement of its jurisdiction and authority.

There are about 300 million Orthodox Christians worldwide. The Orthodox Church split from the Latin Church in 1054.

The break comes in response to the decision of Bartholomew I, Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople and the “first among equals” leader of the global Orthodox Church, to issue a statement Oct. 11 confirming plans for an independent Ukrainian Orthodox Church and restoring ties with the previously schismatic Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kiev Patriarchate.

The announcement also removed the traditional right of the Russian Patriarch to ordain the metropolitan of Kiev, a move that observers predicted would be perceived as a deliberate slight to Moscow. The right dated back to a canonical letter first issued in the year 1686.

Archbishop Yevstratiy, chief spokesman for the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kiev Patriarchate and whose rehabilitation by Constantinople contributed to the current break with Moscow, called the Russian synod’s decision a move toward “self-isolation.”

Writing in a Facebook post, he said, “Sooner or later this will be fixed and the Russian Orthodox Church will return to communion.”

According to the U.S. government-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Press Service, Archbishop Yevstratiy claimed that Orthodox Christians must choose whether to follow the Russian Orthodox “into schism” or “remain in unity with the Ecumenical Patriarch (Bartholomew I of Constantinople) through the Local Ukrainian Church.”

Among the backers of Constantinople’s move are Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, who is running for re-election in March 2019. He had previously asked the Patriarch of Constantinople to grant independence to the Orthodox Church in Ukraine, The Associated Press reported.

While the recent push for an independent, autocephalous Orthodox Church in Ukraine emerged as a serious movement in the 1990s following the collapse of the Soviet Union, it gained further momentum following the Russian annexation of the Crimean Peninsula in 2014, and Russian backing of separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine in response to the unseating of Ukraine’s pro-Russia former president Viktor Yanukovych.

The Russian Orthodox Church, which claims traditional and canonical authority over the Orthodox community in Ukraine, has denied taking political sides in the conflict and said it has worked for peace in eastern Ukraine.

The Russian Church has also voiced concern that the Constantinople patriarchate’s actions could deepen religious divides in Ukraine and inspire breakaway branches to take over church buildings, Reuters reports.

Kiev, now the capital of Ukraine, is the site of the 988 baptism of Vladimir the Great, the grand prince of Kiev, which resulted in the Christianization of Kyivan Rus’, a state whose heritage Ukraine, Russia and Belarus all claim.

Orthodox Christians in Ukraine have recently been divided into three separate groups.

The Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kiev Patriarchate effectively declared itself independent from Moscow in 1992, and is considered by the Russian Orthodox to be a schismatic group. Until now, the other Orthodox Churches have recognized Ukraine as under Moscow’s jurisdiction and honored the excommunication.

The Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, refounded in 1990, is similarly seen as a breakaway group.

The Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate is under the authority of the Russian Church and has been the officially recognized Orthodox Church in the country. </s> The Russian Orthodox Church on Friday announced a rebuff to the leader of the worldwide Orthodox community, saying it would not participate in events headed by the Istanbul-based Ecumenical Patriarchate due to a dispute over control of the church in Ukraine.

The church also announced at a meeting of top priests that it would not even remember Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I in its prayers.

The meeting was called in order to respond to the Ecumenical Patriarchate’s decision last week to allow the Orthodox Church in Ukraine to be autocephalous — ecclesiastically independent. The Russian church, the world’s largest Orthodox communion, fiercely opposes the decision.

Church spokesman Metropolitan Ilarion insisted that Friday’s response by the leaders of Russian orthodoxy “do not mean a complete break of the Eucharistic communion.”

However, it is a significant show of resistance to the authority of Bartholomew, who is considered the “first among equals” among Orthodox leaders.

According to the Interfax news agency, Ilarion warned of a split in the church if efforts to move the Ukrainian church beyond Russian authority continue.

“We will be forced to completely break the Eucharistic communion and this will mean Constantinople patriarch, who often positions himself as the head of the planet’s 300 million Orthodox, will no longer be its head,” he said.

The church in Ukraine 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 self-government have increased since Moscow’s 2014 annexation of the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine and its support for pro-Russia insurgents in eastern Ukraine.

Russian Orthodox Church leader Patriarch Kirill strongly condemned the dispatch of the envoys while opening Friday’s meeting of the Holy Synod. He compared the move 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 had 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.” </s> MOSCOW (AP) — The head of the Russian Orthodox Church is chairing a meeting of top priests to decide how to respond to Orthodox Christianity’s leading body move to send two envoys to Ukraine.

The Russian church claims authority over the church in Ukraine. But many Ukrainian parishes reject the Moscow Patriarchate and have formed a separate church that is pushing for recognition as a self-governing, or autocephalous, institution.

The Istanbul-based Ecumenical Patriarchate announced last week it was sending two bishops to Ukraine as a step toward declaring ecclesiastical independence for the church there.

Patriarch Kirill strongly condemned the move during Friday’s meeting of the Holy Synod and comparing to the split in the Russian Orthodox Church during the 1920s.
The Russian Orthodox Church announces it will break communion with the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople over Eastern Orthodox Church official plans to recognize the autocephaly of two Ukrainian Orthodox Churches. Moscow says it hopes Constantinople will change its mind to avoid this schism. This marks an important new aspect in the rift between Russia and Ukraine.