All Local Churches should know how OCU was created, says UOC Chancellor

Poroshenko's speech at the "Unification Council" in 2018. Photo: Wikimedia

In his UOJ article “Where the Spirit of the Lord Is, There Is Freedom,” UOC Chancellor Metropolitan Anthony appealed to all Local Churches – both those that have recognized the OCU and those that have not – to read the recently published report detailing how the structure was created.

“Read this document not as journalists or diplomats, but as Christians. Ask yourselves whether you recognize the work of the Spirit of God in what is described there,” the hierarch urged. If the answer is no, he said, this should mark the beginning of an open pan-Orthodox discussion, “which everyone is waiting for but which has yet to take place.”

Metropolitan Anthony drew particular attention to an episode in the report that, he said, concerns every Local Church. During a meeting with the Turkish ambassador, the latter told the Phanar delegation that there were five “principal” Churches, while the others, being “much younger,” had emerged from the jurisdiction of Constantinople and could not be regarded as equals. According to the report, the delegation “acknowledged that his words were correct.”

The Metropolitan recalled that warnings about the danger of so-called “Eastern papism” had been voiced not only in the UOC, but also in Serbia, Bulgaria, Antioch, Poland, the Czech Lands and Slovakia, and on Mount Athos. “They were told that this was an exaggeration. And now we read that representatives of Constantinople agree that there are no equals,” he noted, asking whether this was merely a “diplomatic” maneuver or the Phanar’s actual position.

Metropolitan Anthony stressed that all Local Churches are equal in honor not by agreement, but because the same Eucharist is celebrated in each of them and the same Christ abides in each. “If this begins to be called into question, then it is no longer the situation in Ukraine that is at stake, but the very structure of Orthodoxy itself,” he emphasized.

The hierarch also pointed out that the Patriarchate of Constantinople has so far remained silent about the publication, just as it has remained silent for the past eight years about church seizures, anti-Church legislation, and the persecution of UOC believers. “This silence speaks louder than any rebuttal,” the UOC Chancellor said.

As the UOJ reported, the UOJ-USA published a report submitted to Patriarch Bartholomew by a member of the Phanar delegation on the events of December 2018 in Kyiv.

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