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 newly independent Ukrainian Orthodox Church held a service in Kyiv on January 7 marking Orthodox Christmas and celebrating their break with the Russian Orthodox Church. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and other top officials attended the ceremony at the St. Sofia Cathedral. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church became independent on January 6 with the handover of a "tomos" of autocephaly, an official church document, to Ukrainian Metropolitan Epifaniy. The development ends more than 330 years of Russian religious control in Ukraine. </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 Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyiv Patriarchate does not rule out that the Orthodox Church of Ukraine will be granted the tomos on autocephaly in November 2018.

Yevstratii Zorya, the spokesperson of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Kyiv Patriarchate, said this in an interview with the Hromadske.ua television channel, Ukrainian News Agency reports.

"We will do our utmost to see this happen as soon as possible. The closest possible date - the next meeting of the Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, which will be in the second half of November," he said.

He says participating in the unification congress of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church will be primates who applied to the Ecumenical Patriarch with a request to grant the tomos on autocephaly.

"These will be primates of the Kyiv Patriarchate, the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, and some ten, we do not know exactly how many so far, from the Moscow Patriarchate," he said.

As Ukrainian News Agency earlier reported, Patriarch Filaret, the head of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyiv Patriarchate, says the tomos on autocephaly will be granted after unification of the Ukrainian Orthodox Churches.

The Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyiv Patriarchate has urged the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate to jointly prepare the unification congress for electing the head of the Ukrainian autocephalous church. </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> Before signing, the priests held a prayer in the Patriarchal Church of St. George.

At the ceremony held in Istanbul on Saturday, January 5, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew signed the tomos of autocephaly, that is, canonical independence, of the newly-created Orthodox Church of Ukraine.

President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko, Parliament Speaker Andriy Parubiy, former President Viktor Yushchenko, and other guests attended the ceremony.

Before signing, the priests held a prayer in the Patriarchal Church of St. George. After that, OCU Metropolitan Epifaniy and Petro Poroshenko held a meeting with the Ecumenical Patriarch.

It was after this meeting that the signing ceremony took place.

Thus, the Orthodox Church of Ukraine became the 15th local Orthodox church. </s> The Universal Patriarch of the Orthodox Church, Bartholemew I, has decided to grant autocephaly to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, according to a Greek church site, giving a major victory to Kyiv and inflicting an even larger geopolitical defeat on the Moscow Patriarchate and the Kremlin.

Archbishop Yevstraty Zorya, the press secretary of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyiv Patriarchate, citing the Greek outlet Orthodoxia.info, says that Bartholemew informed Moscow Patriarch Kirill about his decision during the latter’s recent visit to Constantinople (nv.ua/ukraine/events/varfolomej-proinformiroval-hlavu-rpts-o-svoem-reshenii-otnositelno-avtokefalii-est-osnovanija-dlja-sderzhannoho-optimizma-upk-kp-2491600.html).

Yevstraty added that the headline in the Greek source could be translated as “The Die is Cast! Ukraine is Receiving Autocephaly.” He said that Patriarch Kirill left his meeting with Bartholemew “in not the best spirit.” But Ukrainians are celebrating what will be a major victory for them.

A spokesman for the Universal Patriarch told Orthodoxia.info that “no one wants yet another split,” something Moscow has threatened if Constantinople proceeded. “Everyone wants unity in the Church.” But he added the Universal Patriarchate won’t be guided in its action by “threats from anyone,” a clear rebuff to Moscow.

According to the spokesman, the Universal Patriarch took the decision about offering autocephaly to the Ukrainian Church in April and is now in the process of implementing it. And in the months since, Constantinople has signaled that it intends to meet Ukraine’s request although it has not provided a specific date.

It is important to recognize what the grant of autocephaly in Ukraine will and won’t do. It will elevate the status of the Ukrainian church and underscore its separation from Moscow, but it won’t end the existence of the Moscow Patriarchate’s network of churches in Ukraine, although it will undoubtedly cause many of them to shift their subordination to Kyiv.

Most important, it will undermine the Moscow Patriarchate’s claim to speak for all Orthodox on the former Soviet space and cost the church itself a great deal of its income given that half of its existing congregations are in Ukraine rather than in Moscow. And it will call into question Moscow’s claim to be the largest Orthodox church in the world.

Obviously, Moscow both religious and secular isn’t going to accept this without a fight. But the decision of the Universal Patriarch means that Ukraine has won a major victory, one that it is likely to build on in the future and one that may serve as a model for other post-Soviet states as far as Orthodoxy is concerned. </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> There is no question, Russian commentator Stanislav Belkovsky says, that the grant of the tomos of autocephaly to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine is “the beginning of the end” of the Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate, something all the more likely because Moscow didn’t think Ukrainian autocephaly would happen.

That is just one sign of how out of touch the church hierarchy is and how it failed to make an argument with the Universal Patriarch in religious terms but limited itself to politics alone, an approach, Belkovsky says, which almost certainly guaranteed its loss on Ukraine and more besides (afterempire.info/2019/01/05/belkovskiy-rpc/).

The hierarchy of the ROC MP around Patriarch Kirill thus has shown itself to be more an arm of the secular authorities than a religious organization, perhaps not surprising, the commentator says, because “faith in God is not an obligatory condition for membership in the Orthodox Church in present-day Russia.”

The ROC MP was set up “as is well known by Joseph Stalin in September 1943 as atype of ministry which should fulfill specific subfunctions in the general system of state power” in the USSR. Only at the end of the 1980s and beginning of the 1990s did it separate in fact from the state. But very rapidly, the ROC MP returned to being what it had been, an arm of the state.

That origin and that return, Belkovsky says, has played “a bad joke” on the ROC MP: its subordination to the Kremlin in all things including in particular the 2014 invasion of Ukraine has led “the inevitable recognition of Ukrainian autocephaly” first by the Universal Patriarch in Constantinople and soon by Orthodox churches throughout the world.

Before 2014, few considered Ukrainian autocephaly possible, “but everything changed after 2014 precisely because the ROC MP not only did not distance itself from the Putin state but demonstrably deepened its dependence on it.” The ROC MP has no right to complain about the OCU’s ties with Kyiv given that its own with the Kremlin are far tighter.

Now, if Putin wants to replace Kirill with Tikhon as patriarch, there is nothing standing in his way; and that shows to all the world that the ROC MP has lost the right to present itself as a religious organization. It is that only for some of its hierarchs, some of its priests and some of its laity. For most of all three, it is something else, a political body.

That condemns it to lose status at home and abroad and means that when the current Russian government passes from the scene, so too will the ROC MP. It has no basis for an existence independent of the state and so will live and die with it, Belkovsky suggests.

Many commentators in Ukraine and even in Russia have adopted an even more negative line about the ROC MP. Perhaps the most damning are those who suggest that while the OCU received its tomos from the Universal Patriarch, the ROC MP received it not from a church official but from Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin (e.g., bitvazaurozay.livejournal.com/698691.html).

Such observations will do little to keep the ROC MP alive as a church, although they may lead the Kremlin and its security services to double down on their defense of their own ideological branch.
The chancellor of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) describes the granting of autocephaly on January 5 to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine as "a secular event."