Phanar cleric from UOC-KP: I was re-ordained, why was OCU admitted in rank?

Patriarch Bartholomew in 2019 granted the Tomos to a person without consecration. Photo: DW

The priest of the Spanish and Portuguese Metropolis of the Phanar, Tarasiy Petruniak, in an interview with Dialogue.tut, said that in 2004, when he was a cleric of the UOC-KP, he was accepted into the clergy of the Patriarchate of Constantinople through reordination. And he does not understand why in 2018, the clergy of the UOC-KP and UAOC, who were in the same status, were called canonical priests by the Phanar.

“In 2004, I was a priest of the Kyiv Patriarchate. However, when I asked to join the Patriarchate of Constantinople, they answered me: 'Your ordination is not filled with the grace of the Holy Spirit.' Therefore, I was accepted as a layman and ordained as a legitimate priest already in the bosom of the Church of Constantinople,” said the priest and recalled that in 2018, Patriarch Bartholomew received clergy of the UOC-KP and UAOC (who had the same canonical status as he himself in 2004) "as priests."

“According to the 68th Apostolic Canon and Canons 36 and 59 of the Council of Carthage, no one can be ordained a second time to the same degree. If a priest has been legally ordained, and someone ordains him a second time, then both the ordainer and the one on whom the second sacrament was performed will be defrocked,” he says.

The priest asks the question: “At what moment were the consecrations of the former Kyiv Patriarchate filled with grace?”

“If from the very beginning they were filled with the Holy Spirit, then I should be deprived of my dignity precisely as a twice ordained person,” says Fr. Tarasy. “If the consecrations of the representatives of the UOC-KP, like mine, were invalid, then why were they not accepted into the fold of Constantinople as laymen?”

Earlier, the UOJ wrote that, according to Serhiy Dumenko, the OCU does not agree to reordination.

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