ROC surprised at Patriarch Bartholomew’s statement about people of Ukraine

Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, head of the Department for External Church Relations

Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople said people of Ukraine "is beyond the canonical Church," reports Interfax.

"It's amazing to hear from the ecclesiastic see that in Ukraine supposedly a whole multimillion people is beyond the ecclesiastic truth and canonicity, and therefore needs urgent intervention from outside. And what about the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which has more than 12,000 parishes, more than 200 monasteries, millions of believers in all parts of Ukraine? " said Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, head of the Department for External Church Relations, in an interview with the edition.

He recalled that in 2016 at the Synaxis of Primates of the Local Orthodox Churches Patriarch Bartholomew publicly greeted His Beatitude Metropolitan Onufry of Kiev and All Ukraine, calling him "the only canonical hierarch of the Orthodox Church in Ukraine, obviously with all the other holy hierarchs subordinate to him".

Metropolitan Hilarion stressed that "beyond the communion with the Church is not the people of Ukraine, but Ukrainian schismatics", recalling that the schism is a political project that arose in the 1990s and that there has always been an opportunity to overcome the schism.

Earlier, Patriarch Bartholomew said: the responsibility of the Patriarchate of Constantinople is to resturn the Ukrainian people to the truth and canonicity of the Church.

In mid-April, Poroshenko turned to Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople with a request to provide the Tomos on autocephaly of the Church in Ukraine and announced the creation of the Single Local Church. The Verkhovna Rada supported the appeal of the President. The Kiev Patriarchate has already stated that they see their leader Filaret, anathemized by the canonical Church, as the head of the SLC.

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