THE PATRIARCHATE OF MOSCOW: THE ''UKRAINIAN SCHISM' COULD LEAD TO 'BLOODSHED''

The intra-Orthodox disputes over the possible recognition of an independent Ukrainian Orthodox Church are far from over. The patriarchates of Moscow and Constantinople explain their reasons. While the Pope, “the Catholic Churches should not interfere in the internal affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church, not even in political matters”

gianni valente, la stampa

rome

In Ukraine "blood will be shed", if the creation of a national Orthodox Church, out of the control of the Patriarchate of Moscow, is canonically legitimized and the "schismatics" try to take possession of the sanctuaries-symbol of the Ukrainian Orthodox memory, like the Monastery of the Caves of Kiev. The inauspicious prophecy is launched by the Russian Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev, spokesman for the Patriarchate of Moscow on the international scene. He stated it during an interview with the ecclesial information agency Romfea, a Greek Orthodox website considered in line with the Patriarchate of Moscow.  

  

This message is the most shocking and effective passage of the many important things contained in the interview. Through the Greek "friend" agency, the influential representative of Russian Orthodoxy has spared no effort in providing details and confidential information to make the Greek-speaking Orthodox aware of the vision of the Moscow Patriarchate on the "Ukrainian issue", which is complicating relations in the family of Greek Orthodox Churches.  

  

Behind the attempt to create a Ukrainian Orthodox Church independent from the Patriarchate of Moscow - Hilarion claimed - there are "three forces": the current Ukrainian political leadership, the "schismatic" Orthodox of the self-proclaimed Filarete Patriarch of Kiev and the "Uniates" of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church. Each of these realities - Hilarion said - acts "for its own benefit".  

According to the Head of the Department for External Church Relations of the Patriarchate of Moscow, Ukrainian political leaders are looking for a topic to help them win the elections, “which appears almost unlikely, considering the extremely low rating of the leadership in force”. Instead, the followers of the self-proclaimed Orthodox Patriarchate of Kiev - not canonically recognized by any of the Orthodox Churches - want "to legitimize all that they have accomplished in the last 25 years". While the Greek Ukrainian Catholics would aim to "weaken the Orthodox Church", since for them the new Ukrainian national Church "should be united to the Successor of Peter" and become "no longer Orthodox, but Catholic".  

  

Hilarion also dwells on the recent visit to Fanar, the seat of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, by representatives of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church still connected with the Patriarchate of Moscow. The Russian Metropolitan offers a balanced account of that meeting to deny that Patriarch Bartholomew is willing to offer canonical support to the project of an independent Ukrainian national Church. Hilarion contests the historical reconstructions - attributed to Metropolitan Iohannis of Pergamum, authoritative theologian of the Patriarchate of Constantinople - according to which the incorporation under the Moscow Patriarchate of the Metropolitanate of Kiev, formerly subject to the Church of Constantinople, had been canonically disposed of in 1685 only as a temporary and therefore revocable measure. In any case, Hilarion insists, in talks with the Ukrainian delegation, Patriarch Bartholomew himself "stressed that for him a schism is a schism, and he sees Filerete Denisenko (the self-proclaimed "Patriarch" of Kiev, ed) as the initiator of the schism". According to Hilarion himself, Patriarch Bartholomew also defined as "enemies of the Patriarchate of Constantinople" those who spread false rumors about an alleged document granting autocephaly to the Ukrainian Church already prepared by the same Ecumenical Patriarchate.  

  

  The ecclesial concerns of Bartholomew  

  

The Ukrainian “Orthodox issue” is anything but closed. On 11 June last, Patriarch Bartholomew, in a message circulated by the Ecumenical Patriarchate, recalled the duty of the Church of Constantinople to seek solutions to the Ukrainian question, to "bring everyone back to the truth and canonicity of the Church". On that occasion, Bartholomew recalled that "When a brother is defined as schismatic or heretical, and all the more so when an entire people is defined as such, and therefore finds itself outside the canonicity of the Church, we are all then called, without any reservation, to put ourselves on spiritual alert". For this reason, a delegation of the Patriarchate of Constantinople is on a tour of the autocephalous Orthodox Churches (in these days Metropolitan Emmanuel has visited the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Alexandria), with the intention of exploring individual opinions on the possibility of granting autocephaly to a Ukrainian national Orthodox Church. On 9 July next, Hilarion reported, the delegation of the Ecumenic Patriarchate will also visit the Patriarchate of Moscow.  

  

  The entanglement of the situation makes even more evident the error made by the Patriarchate of Moscow when in 2016 it decided to boycott the Pan-Orthodox Council of Crete, snubbing that Council meeting where the Orthodox troubles regarding the Ukraine question could also have been addressed. Now, Hilarion recognizes that "the most important thing" is to begin an appropriate dialogue between the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the Patriarchate of Moscow, avoiding exchanges of views "through the mass media" and "entering into negotiations" with the awareness that " The Russian Orthodox Church, no less than the Church of Constantinople, is interested in bringing schismatics back to the fold of the Church". At the same time, the Russian Metropolitan does not give up on questioning the Metropolitan Ioannis of Pergamum, to whom he attributes "a conception based not on a real knowledge of the situation but on a one-sided and biased reading of the sources traced back 300 years". 

  

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   Appointment in Bari  

  

Russian sources credit as "very probable" the presence of Hilarion at the meeting with the Patriarchs and the heads of the Churches of the Middle East convoked by Pope Francis at Bari on 7 July next. But the intra-Orthodox disputes on the Ukrainian issue should not cast their shadows on the desired gathering to pray and face together the emergencies of Christians in the Middle East. On the agenda are the vital problems and concrete risks faced by the suffering Churches of Middle Eastern countries, which make jurisdictional disputes within Orthodoxy seem secondary. Pope Francis himself tried to neutralize the temptations of the Orthodox leaders to use the Catholic Church as "shore" to make their position prevail in the internal oppositions of the Orthodox head: "The Catholic Church, the Catholic Churches", the Bishop of Rome said on 30 May, before a Russian Orthodox delegation led by Hilarion himself, "should not interfere in the internal affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church, not even in political matters". On the same occasion, with indirect reference to the requests of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church to be recognized as a Patriarchate, he also reiterated that "the Catholic Church will never allow an attitude of division to be born on its own We will never allow it. I do not want it. In Moscow, in Russia, there is only one Patriarchate, yours. We will not have another.”