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”
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".
.
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.”