The expert tells how Phanar usurped power in Orthodoxy

Alexander Shchipkov. Photo: screenshot of the Spas youtube channel

First Deputy Chairman of the Synodal Department for Church Relations with Society and Mass Media of the Russian Orthodox Church, Doctor of Political Science Alexander Shchipkov, said on the air of Spas TV channel on what basis the Church of Constantinople appropriated the status of the Ecumenical Patriarchate.

“No Constantinople originally existed – there was a city of Byzantium, in which none of the apostles founded the Orthodox Church. Later, already in the Middle Ages, the Greeks invented a beautiful legend that Andrew the First-Called was preaching in this area, and that they are also a kind of First-Called within the universal Orthodox ecumene. Long before Constantinople, there were ancient churches of Ephesus, founded by the Apostle John the Theologian, and of Alexandria, founded by the Apostle Mark,” said Alexander Shchipkov.

According to Shchipkov, today there is neither Constantinople nor an Orthodox tsar, nor a Senate, but there is the city of Istanbul, headed by the "king" Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and the exorbitant ambitions of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, not supported by the canons of the Ecumenical Councils.

“In the twentieth century, the Greeks began to interpret Canon 28 of the IV Ecumenical Council very broadly: they declared that they were in charge of all the Orthodox Diasporas that were outside the canonical territory of their Church. This is a direct and gross distortion of the canon of the Council of Chalcedon. In the same century, the Greeks began to claim that the Ecumenical Patriarch has the right to receive complaints from absolutely all Local Churches, which is again a direct and gross violation of Canons 9 and 17 of the Council of Chalcedon,” the expert noted.

“As such, the name ‘Ecumenical Patriarchate’ appeared in the 6th century, and this is a self-name: no Local Churches gave the See of Constantinople the right to appropriate this honorary title. This is an usurpation of power,” he added.

As the UOJ previously reported, the head of Phanar is happy about the increase in the number of Ukrainian pilgrims to Turkey.

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