Filaret: Phanariots asked in negotiations - what will we have from this?

The head of the UOC-KP Filaret Denisenko. Photo: UOJ

The head of the UOC-KP Filaret Denisenko in an interview with the ZIK channel said about the goals that the Patriarchate of Constantinople pursued, granting the Tomos of “autocephaly” to the OCU.

Answering the journalist’s question about whether he had met with Patriarch Bartholomew after the bestowal of the Tomos, Filaret Denisenko replied that this meeting “would not give anything”.

According to him, "the Patriarch of Constantinople has set a goal – to increase his flock". Filaret said that the Phanar in Turkey "has a total of up to 10,000 believers". In addition, Denisenko recalled that "there are believers of the Patriarchate of Constantinople in Northern Greece, on the Dodecanese Islands and the diaspora".

He emphasized that the Patriarchate of Constantinople “has a small flock, and he wants the flock to be large. And now, at the expense of the Ukrainian Church, he wants to increase his flock.”

Filaret said that even in the process of negotiations, representatives of the Patriarch of Constantinople asked the question, “What will we have from this?” According to him, this question already suggests that the Phanariots wanted to have a benefit: “What benefit? To take part of our flock and add to the Phanar.”

The head of the UOC-KP also said that he agreed to such conditions “for the sake of the Tomos”. But if he had known that the Tomos would be what it is now, then he wouldn’t have gone for that: “then there would have been no council but a big Kyiv Patriarchate. One and strong, but without the Tomos”.

Filaret Denisenko also believes that there are no honorary patriarchs in the Church, and this is an invention of the Greeks.

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RISU was founded by the Ukrainian Catholic University under the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church.