Patriarch Bartholomew announces soon recognition of OCU by Church of Greece

The Primate of the Church of Greece and the head of the OCU. Photo: pomisna.info

If there had been no political pressure on the Local Churches, the decision to recognize the OCU might have long been a fait accompli. Patriarch Bartholomew said about it at a meeting with the Ukrainians, which was held in Istanbul the day before, reports TSN.

“In the past few months we have been witnessing the situation developing in Ukraine. Perhaps, the decision to recognize the Orthodox Church of Ukraine would be made if, of course, there were no political pressure from different countries on our sisters – Local Orthodox Churches. We hope that in the near future it will be over. We pray and hope that all Local Orthodox Churches will sooner or later recognize the independence of the OCU. But the first Church to recognize the Orthodox Church of Ukraine will be our sister-Church – Greek Orthodox Church,” said the Ecumenical Patriarch.

Recall earlier the Greek media published information that the agenda of the next meeting of the Bishops' Council of the Church of Hellas, which will be held from October 8 to 11, 2019, does not include the “Ukrainian issue”. According to the deputy head of the Department for External Church Relations of the UOC, Archpriest Nikolai Danilevich, members of the Bishops’ Council of the Greek Church made a wise and quite understandable decision.

"That’s right. The overwhelming majority of hierarchs of the Greek Orthodox Church are set against the recognition of the OCU. Random hierarchs stand not so much for recognition as for supporting Phanar somehow. Thus, this issue may trigger a separation within the Church of Greece. And Archbishop Jerome is well aware of this fact,” Archpriest Nikolai said on Facebook. “Indeed, why contribute to solving the problems of Phanar it incurred with its own hands at the cost of creating problems in his Church? Therefore, even the Church of Hellas, on which the enemies of the unity of the Church of Christ pinned their hopes, will not recognize the schism, i.e. ‘OCU’.”

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