Tomos for the OCU: Bartholomew cites ecology as justification

Patriarch Bartholomew. Photo: Concordia

On September 23, 2025, speaking at the 2025 Concordia Annual Summit in New York, Patriarch Bartholomew of Constanitnople presented a new rationale for granting the Tomos of Autocephaly to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, justifying this decision with the environmental agenda.

According to him, “We see how the balance of our physical ecosystems remains in delicate interplay as temperatures on Earth rise and shift that balance in ways that are painfully destructive to life on every level.”

“That is why the Ecumenical Patriarch's commitment to the environment is indivisibly linked with our commitment to the freedom and self-determination of the Ukrainian people and why we granted independence, autocaphaly status and self-rule to their Orthodox Church in 2019,” Patriarch Bartholomew declared.

The Primate of the Church of Constantinople stressed that it is impossible to separate care for the environment from care for people. “To honor the land without honoring the human beings who dwell in that land and vice versa, to honor your fellow human beings without honoring the land upon which they should thrive is a madness that afflicts our world as much today as ever in the history of the human race,” he emphasized.

It should be recalled that earlier Patriarch Bartholomew told Trump he granted the Tomos to the OCU because Russia is Ukraine’s enemy.

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