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Damascus, 31 December 2018
Your All-Holiness, Archbishop of Constantinople-New Rome and Ecumenical Patriarch, beloved brother and concelebrant in Christ the Lord, Kyrios Kyrios Bartholomew. With great joy, we embrace Your Beloved person in the Lord and we say,
In these blessed days of the Holy Incarnation of our Lord, we lift up our warmest supplications for the abundance of your good health and deep prosperity. May this upcoming year bring forth God's mercies and blessings on the Orthodox world and all the world.
We are in receipt of your letter dated December
24th, 2018, in which you inform us of the developments related to the
Orthodox church in the State of Ukraine, with which we are familiar. We
do not hide from Your Loving Person that it was alarming to us, not just
for the disunity it has generated in the Orthodox Church, but also
because it continuously disregards the opinions of the local Orthodox
Churches.
Your All-Holiness,
Your All-Holiness,
We would like to assure you, and
out of our love for your noble person, that it is our desire to see the
unity of the Orthodox world strengthened and consolidated during your
auspicious era. It seems from your letter that you have resolved to
continue the process of granting autocephaly and finalizing it on the
day of the Holy Theophany. Thus, we appeal to you not to take any
decision that does not carry the consensus of the Autocephalous Orthodox
Churches. For it is unreasonable to end a schism at the expense of the
unity of the Orthodox world.
In this letter, we wish to express to
you, with fraternal love, that we continue to consider that the most
beneficial for the peace of the Church and Her unity, and for the common
Orthodox witness in our world today, is to suspend and postpone this
process until the Ukrainian issue is examined, and a pan-Orthodox
solution is found.
We therefore adjure Your All-Holiness to call
your brothers, the Primates of the Orthodox Churches, to examine these
matters, in order to safeguard our Church from the dangers that will not
lead to peace and harmony, neither in Ukraine nor in the Orthodox
world.
Our love for our Orthodox Church and for your Beloved
Person prompts us to write these words, with our hope to see the
Orthodox world united, especially in your auspicious era, attesting to
the Truth of our Lord Jesus Who was incarnate for the salvation of the
world. I conclude with the best greetings from Damascus, filled with the
love of the Holy Church of Antioch's children.
JOHN XPatriarch of Antioch and all the East
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Translated from the Arabic
