Met. Luke responds to the Phanar’s invitation to “Unification Council”

Metropolitan Luke of Zaporozhye and Melitopol

Patriarch Bartholomew questioned his status of the first hierarch in Orthodoxy because of his participation in political projects aimed at splitting the unity of the Church. This was announced on December 9 by the Metropolitan Luke of Zaporozhye and Melitopol in response to Phanar’s invitation to take part in the “unification council,” reports the press service of the Zaporozhye eparchy.

According to His Eminence Luke, the Patriarch of Constantinople, through his actions, subject the UOC Orthodox flock to discrimination and persecution.

“You declare that today in your person you represent the “Mother Church” for the Ukrainian people,” said Metropolitan Luke. “However, for some reason, you are an ideological inspirer of a large-scale campaign aimed at inciting hatred towards the UOC, seizing its shrines, persecuting its flock, and also undermining the positions of Orthodoxy in Ukraine in favor of the Uniates who are gaining ground as crusaders on the primordial Orthodox lands! What mother helps torment her child?"

The hierarch reminded of the pickets, held at the eparchial administration, at which activists – supporters of the SLC – shouted insulting slogans.

“Behind these slogans are terrible things: the prevalence of political expediency in any important issue of church life, the reign of total persecution of ecclesiastic nonconformity, which does not correspond to the general ideological line of the governing elite, the desecration of shrines and the perversion of canons by long-time opponents of Orthodoxy, who are now wearing an outfit of supporters of the autocephalous project promoted by you,” said Bishop Luke.

Earlier, Phanar sent invitations to the “Unification Council” to the hierarchs of the UOC. On December 5, Petro Poroshenko announced that the “Unification Council” would take place on December 15.

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