Filaret: The Unification Council was not ours but Constantinople’s

Filaret Denisenko

The unification of Orthodoxy in Ukraine took the path of falsehood. This view was expressed by Filaret Denisenko in an interview with the “1 + 1” TV channel. 

“It was not our Council, but of the Constantinople Patriarchate, because it wasn’t me as the patriarch who presided at it but a representative of the Ecumenical Patriarch,” Denisenko explained.

He also said that he does not have any relationship with Epiphany and voiced his main complaints about the head of the OCU.

“We recognize the primate, but there is no relationship with him because what we agreed on and what the Bishops' Council accepted is broken. Follow the path of falsehood. Claims to Epiphany are as follows: he must cooperate with me as the patriarch. And in all these four or five months he has never concelebrated or communicated with me. We’ve met only a few times, is this communication? When the Church should be led every day?!” Filaret wonders.

We recall that earlier the "honorary patriarch" had sent invitations to the "hierarchs" of the OCU to the "solemn prayerful communion", issued on the forms of the Kiev Patriarchate. According to the Ukrainian media, the “Honorary Patriarch” of the OCU Filaret is considering the prospects for the full restoration of the Kiev Patriarchate in Ukraine.

Read also