Georgian Orthodox Church will not take part in Pan-Orthodox Council

The Georgian Orthodox Church will not take part in the Pan-Orthodox Council to be held in Crete on June 17-27. The relevant decision was taken at a meeting of the Church’s Holy Synod held in Tbilisi on Friday presided by Ilya II, the Catholicos-Patriarch of All Georgia, reports the portal RIA Novosti.

The reason for refusal was “a non-dogmatic provision of the projects of some documents concerning the marriage between the Orthodox and non-Orthodox.”

"We find a question of diptych very important. The Georgian Church, according to the Greek diptych, does not take its intrinsic place. The Council bypassed such important for us questions as a church calendar, provisions of marriage which were raised by the Georgian Church. We thought it would be right to withdraw from participating," said Metropolitan Zosima (Shioshvili) of Tsilkani and Dusheti to reporters after a meeting of the Holy Synod in Tbilisi on June 10.

Metropolitan stressed that "if the documents adopted by the Council are acceptable, the Georgian Church will agree on them." "The results of the Council will show how canonical the decisions taken will be. We will consider them, and if the World Church accepts them, they will be legitimate, and if not, they will not be mandatory to follow."

As stated by a member of the Synod of the Georgian Orthodox Church Metropolitan Hilarion of Mestia and Upper Svaneti, “there are fundamental questions that must be addressed by the Constantinople Patriarchate, but not taken into account.” The Holy Synod will clarify its position in a statement to follow.

Over the past days several Orthodox Churches have refused to attend the Pan-Orthodox Council. The Bulgarian Church was the first to declare it will be absent. The Patriarchate of Antioch (Syria) followed. And the Serbian Orthodox Church declared its refusal to attend on Thursday.

Should at least one of the local Churches be absent, the Council will not be considered Pan-Orthodox and its decisions will not be mandatory for those not in attendance. The Russian Orthodox Church on June 10 put forward an idea of convening a consultative meeting first. In the meantime, the Synod of the Patriarchate of Constantinople made a decision to go ahead with preparations for the Council as planned.

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