Hierarch of Constantinople: Russian Church has declared total war on us

Metropolitan Emmanuel of Chalcedon. Photo: katholisch

Metropolitan Emmanuel of Chalcedon said in an interview with the Greek newspaper Kathimerini that the Russian Orthodox Church had declared “total war” on the Ecumenical Patriarchate. This was reported by Orthodox Times.

“We do indeed find ourselves facing a new environment and are entering uncharted waters, less because something has substantively changed and more because barbarity is tending to become the norm in inter-Church relations. We appear to be confronted with the recognition of what institutionalized barbarity is and what the total war declared by the Patriarchate of Moscow truly means, even as we strive to keep hope alive,” the hierarch said.

He did not specify how this “war” manifests itself on the part of the ROC, but assured that the Phanar “responds to it with the silence of prayer.”

According to him, the Ecumenical Patriarchate is creating its own structures in the Baltic countries “in order to heal the canonical disorder of the Moscow Patriarchate, sharing the people’s anxiety, as it has done for centuries.”

“Let us not forget that both the Church of Estonia and the Church of Latvia had already been proclaimed autonomous by the Ecumenical Patriarchate in the past, while today the establishment of an Exarchate of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Lithuania constitutes a fact of the highest significance, offering hope to frightened Orthodox Christians. This action, as well as the support extended in Estonia, rather than constituting an 'intrusion,' as it is wrongly described, in reality represents the essential healing of a wound that was violently inflicted in 1945,” the metropolitan said.

He also made it clear that “the Ecumenical Patriarchate, regarding Ukraine and the canonical granting of autocephaly, will never change its position, as the matter has been decided ecclesiastically and is irreversible.”

Earlier, the UOJ reported that, according to Metropolitan Emmanuel, the Ecumenical Patriarchate does not support the Montenegrin schismatics.

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