"We were about to leave, but were detained" – Phanar bishop on OCU creation

Poroshenko with Phanar hierarchs. Photo: open sources

Metropolitan Gregorios of Ancyra, now a hierarch of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, described in a report to Patriarch Bartholomew how, on the eve of the “Unification Council” in December 2018, the Phanar delegation was prepared to leave Ukraine but was instead escorted to the Presidential Administration. The document was published by the Union of Orthodox Journalists in America.

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In 2018, the future metropolitan was serving as a patriarchal deacon and assisting Metropolitan Emmanuel of Gaul, now Metropolitan of Chalcedon, who headed the delegation, with secretarial work. He compiled his nearly 20-page “Chronicle” immediately after returning from Kyiv, in late December 2018 or early January 2019.

According to the document, the crisis came to a head on the night of December 14. Metropolitan Emmanuel returned from a late-night meeting with Petro Poroshenko only at 2 a.m. and told his companions: “Unfortunately, we will fail.”

According to him, Filaret Denysenko was "unyielding and inflexible" and refused to reduce his demands for special powers within the new structure, enjoying “the President's silent support.”

Convinced that they were being monitored at their residence, the Phanar representatives switched to communicating through handwritten notes and decided to propose that the Patriarch recall the delegation. Metropolitan Emmanuel even bought a plane ticket.

Upon learning this, presidential adviser Rostyslav Pavlenko informed Poroshenko “in terror.” By noon on December 14, Emmanuel had packed his bags and called for cars to take him to the airport, but the president asked him to “stop by briefly” at the presidential offices on the way.

About an hour later, Metropolitan Gregorios writes, word came that police were on their way to collect the other members of the delegation. They all put on their cassocks and kamilavkas and were taken to the Presidential Administration under a “powerful police escort.” On the way, Archbishop Daniel of Pamphilon protested what he called their “forcible transportation” and notified the U.S. Embassy, while Metropolitan Amphilochios of Adrianople contacted the Greek Foreign Ministry.

At the presidential offices, the Phanar representatives had their cell phones confiscated, were subjected to personal searches, and were taken to an operations room, where Poroshenko, Pavlenko, a senior security official, and Emmanuel were waiting.

According to the author, when the Bishop of Adrianople asked what was happening, the Bishop of Gaul replied that they had been detained and were prohibited from leaving the country.

The delegation was allowed to leave after the talks, but the surveillance did not stop. During dinner at a restaurant, the author said, “more than ten security agents moved around us” [the Phanar representatives – Ed.), “making little effort to conceal their secret character.”

Metropolitan Gregorios himself acknowledges that the delegation left the presidential offices with heavy hearts because of the forcible transportation and the "intense, unbearable pressure."

On December 15, 2018, the OCU, headed by Epifaniy Dumenko, was created at the “Unification Council” from two schismatic structures – the UOC-KP and UAOC. On January 5, 2019, Patriarch Bartholomew presented it with the Tomos. Of more than 100 bishops of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church, only two took part in the “Council.” Filaret later left the OCU and revived the UOC-KP, which he headed until his death on March 20, 2026.

As the UOJ previously reported, Petro Poroshenko called criticism that the “Unification Council” had failed to unite the Ukrainian Churches unfounded.

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