Phanar: We will not put our decisions under the judgment of other Churches

Patriarch Bartholomew. Photo: greek.vema.com.au

The head of the Church of Constantinople, Patriarch Bartholomew, said that he would not put his decision to grant the Tomos to the OCU under the judgment of other Churches, the fosfanariou.gr website reports.

On September 1, 2023, in a speech on the occasion of the arrival of Epifaniy Dumenko to the Phanar, Patriarch Bartholomew said that he and his Church “do what we believe is right.”

“We are provoked and invited by various sister Churches for the Ecumenical Patriarchate to convene again a Pan-Orthodox Conference or a Synaxis of Orthodox Primates to deal with the Ukrainian ecclesiastical issue,” said Patriarch Bartholomew.

However, according to him, “our Patriarchate rejects these proposals because it is not willing to put under the judgment of the other Churches a Canonical Act, which it carried out itself.”

“And I say 'Canonical Act', because the granting of Autocephaly to the Church of Ukraine, with its 44 million faithful, was within the framework of the rights and diaconal responsibilities of the Ecumenical Patriarchate,” says Bartholomew.

The head of the Phanar stated that "If we exclude the Ancient Patriarchates of the East, all the newer Orthodox Churches, starting with the Church of Russia, received the Autocephaly from Constantinople."

“Why shouldn’t Ukraine get it too? That's the point, very simple and clear,” says Bartholomew.

He reiterated that he would convene "neither a Pan-Orthodox Council nor a Synaxis of Primates, because we have no intention of placing the decisions and initiatives of the Ecumenical Patriarchate under the judgment of the new ecclesiology."

Earlier, the UOJ wrote that at the Phanar, Bartholomew discussed Ukraine-related issues with Dumenko.

Read also