On Patriarch Bartholomew's secret meetings with an anathematized person

Patriarch Bartholomew. Photo: FB of the Patriarchate of Constantinople

Former head of the Presidential Secretariat Viktor Baloha has spoken about negotiations in 2008 over the creation of what was then envisioned as an equivalent of today’s OCU. Among other things, he described taking Filaret to Istanbul for meetings with Patriarch Bartholomew.

“Talks and dinners with Bartholomew, Filaret, and Mefodiy [head of the UAOC – Ed.] would go on for seven or eight hours,” Baloha said.

Filaret told another politician, V. Kyrylenko, much the same thing in 2017, although Kyrylenko has only now made it public: “We agreed that he [Bartholomew – Ed.] would come for the celebrations and that the issue of recognizing the Kyiv Patriarchate would be resolved here.”

And one thing in this story is particularly striking: Patriarch Bartholomew was negotiating with a man whose anathematization he himself had officially recognized.

In a letter to Patriarch Alexy dated April 7, 1997, he wrote regarding the anathematization of Filaret and Gleb Yakunin, as well as the deposition from holy orders of V. Rusantsov, A. Starina, and I. Shibayev: “Having received information about the aforementioned decision, we brought it to the attention of the hierarchy of our Ecumenical Throne and instructed them henceforth to have no ecclesiastical communion with the above-mentioned persons.”

Of course, formally speaking, dinners and negotiations cannot be called “ecclesiastical communion.” Nevertheless, secret talks with a person excommunicated from the Church hardly seem consistent with the substance of that letter. More broadly, such secretive dealings are hardly becoming of a primate who presents himself as the head of Orthodoxy.

“Let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No,’ ‘No.’ For whatever is more than these is from the evil one” (Matt. 5:37), Christ says.

But apparently not for the “first without equals.”

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