The Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) will not react to
the Crete Council documents that have been published
online, and will wait until the official documents are
received for examination, said Chairman of the Department
for External Church Relations (DECR) of the Moscow
Patriarchate Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk
to RIA-Novosti.
On July 15 the ROC Holy Synod recognized the Crete Council
as an important Church event noting that it nevertheless
cannot be considered as a Pan-Orthodox Council. That is
why ROC did not recognize the pan-Orthodox status of the
documents adopted by the Crete Council and it was decided
to hand them over to the Synodal Biblical and Theological
Commission.
“We only saw the text [of the documents adopted by
the Council – ed.] on the internet. We will
definitely not react to internet-publications
officially,” the metropolitan said. He specified
that ROC needs to “first receive and then to study
them”.
Primates of ten of fifteen Local Orthodox Churches took
part in the Council that was held in June in Crete under
the chairmanship of Patriarch Bartholomew of
Constantinople. The Russian, Antiochian, Bulgarian and
Georgian Churches whose representatives did not come to
the Council did not agree with its regulations and the
preparation procedure along with the texts of a number of
its documents. However, the Crete forum participants
proposed to make it a permanent Orthodox body and to hold
its meetings on a regular basis.