page_title: 1996 Moscow–Constantinople schism
section_title: 2018 Moscow–Constantinople schism
hierarchical_section_title: 1996 Moscow–Constantinople schism / Aftermath / 2018 Moscow–Constantinople schism
caption_attribution_description: English: Patriarch Kirill of Moscow Русский: Патриарх Московский и всея Руси Кирилл
context_page_description: In 1996 a schism between Moscow and Constantinople occurred; this schism began on 23 February 1996, when the Russian Orthodox Church severed full communion with the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, and ended on 16 May 1996 when the Russian Orthodox Church and the Ecumenical Patriarchate reached an agreement.
  This excommunication by the Russian Orthodox Church was done in response to a decision of the synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate to reestablish an Orthodox church in Estonia under the Ecumenical Patriarchate's canonical jurisdiction as an autonomous church on 20 February 1996. This schism has similarities with the Moscow–Constantinople schism of October 2018.
  On 8 November 2000, in an official statement, the Russian Orthodox Church described this schism as "the tragic situation of February–May 1996, when, because of the schismatic actions of the Patriarchate of Constantinople in Estonia, Orthodox Christians of the Churches of Constantinople and Russia, who live all over the world in close spiritual contact, were deprived of common Eucharistic communion at the one Chalice of Christ."
context_section_description: The 1996 schism has similarities with the schism of October 2018. Both schisms were caused by a dispute between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Ecumenical Patriarchate over the canonical jurisdiction over a territory in Eastern Europe upon which the Russian Orthodox Church claimed to have the exclusive canonical jurisdiction, territory which after the collapse of the Soviet Union had become an independent state (Ukraine, Estonia). The break of communion in 1996 was made by Moscow unilaterally, as in 2018.
  The fact that the 1996 schism over Estonia lasted only three months "has raised hope in some quarters that the new [2018 Moscow–Constantinople] schism might also be short"; a source from the Estonian Apostolic Orthodox Church even declared the Russian Orthodox Church "will likely back down [over Ukraine], just as it did over Estonia". However, on 15 October 2018, just after the break of full communion with the Ecumenical Patriarchate by the ROC, Metropolitan Hilarion, chairman of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Department for External Church Relations, said in an interview to the mass media that "in 1996, the Church of Constantinople intruded into canonical territory of the Russian Church by establishing its jurisdiction in Estonia, and we were forced to break the Eucharistic communion with this Church"; Hilarion added that the Russian Orthodox Church "had not recognized this decision [of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in 1996] and do[es] not recognize it. However, the canonical crimes committed by the Patriarchate of Constantinople now [in 2018 after the 11 October 2018 declaration of the Ecumenical Patriarchate] are more grievous as it declared its intention to grant an autocephaly to a part of the Russian Orthodox Church, and not the part which once belonged to Constantinople."
  In an interview given to the BBC on 2 November 2018, Archbishop Job, hierarch of the Church of Constantinople, rejected the idea that there could be two jurisdictions over Ukraine the way there is two jurisdictions in Estonia, stating that canonically there could be only one church on the territory of Ukraine and that therefore an exarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine was "simply uncanonical" and that in Ukraine "there can be no repetition of Estonia’s scenario".
caption: Patriarch Kirill of Moscow who was the Patriarch of Moscow when the 2018 Moscow–Constantinople schism began
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