Ohrid metropolitan rejects Phanar’s right to grant autocephaly unilaterally
Metropolitan Grigoriy accused the Patriarch of Constantinople of “judicial activism” and of making decisions driven by political considerations rather than canon law.
Metropolitan Grigoriy of Kumanovo and Osogovo, a hierarch of the Macedonian Orthodox Church – Ohrid Archdiocese, has published a detailed canonical analysis arguing that the Patriarchate of Constantinople’s claim to the exclusive right to grant tomoses of autocephaly has no legal validity.
In his statement, the hierarch recalled that the canonical procedure for granting autocephaly was clearly established by the decisions of the Pan-Orthodox Pre-Conciliar Commissions in Chambésy. Under the agreed procedure, the right to initiate a decision on autocephaly belongs exclusively to the Mother Church under whose jurisdiction the autonomous ecclesiastical region falls, after which the document is submitted for Pan-Orthodox consensus. The Serbian Orthodox Church, as the Mother Church of the MOC–OA, already exercised this right and granted it a Tomos in 2022, thereby making the Archdiocese’s status final and legally effective.
Metropolitan Grigoriy separately addressed Constantinople’s actions in Ukraine. “If the Patriarchate of Constantinople issues a tomos to a certain autonomous ecclesiastical region, as it did in the case of Ukraine, such an individual act must conform to the general act from which it derives – namely, the decisions of the Fourth and Fifth Pre-Conciliar Conferences,” the hierarch said.
According to him, the Ukrainian tomos issued by the Phanar directly contradicted those decisions, and therefore “such an individual act (tomos) is annulled.”
The metropolitan stressed that the Patriarchate of Constantinople possesses only a “primacy of honor” and is obliged to forward a Tomos it receives to the other Local Churches in order to achieve Pan-Orthodox consensus, but has no right to substitute itself for the Mother Church or issue tomoses on its own authority.
“The Patriarch of Constantinople, acting on his own, is not a body legitimately authorized to decide questions concerning the granting of a tomos of autocephaly outside his jurisdiction,” Metropolitan Grigoriy stated.
He added that the Patriarch of Constantinople engages in “judicial activism,” meaning that he makes decisions based on his own views and controversial political considerations rather than on the canons.
The hierarch warned that Constantinople’s unilateral actions undermine the Church’s canonical order.
“If the Patriarchate of Constantinople pursues its ambition to grant autocephaly unilaterally, this serves only one purpose – to establish a ‘supra-jurisdiction’ of a single ‘universal throne,’” Metropolitan Grigoriy concluded, warning of the emergence of an “Orthodox pope” wielding supreme authority over all autocephalous Churches.
The Tomos recognizing the autocephaly of the MOC–OA, issued by the Serbian Orthodox Church in 2022, has been officially accepted by the Synods of the Russian, Bulgarian, Romanian, and several other Local Churches. The Patriarchate of Constantinople has declined to circulate the Serbian document and is seeking to have the hierarchs in Skopje abandon the historic name “Macedonian Orthodox Church.”
As the UOJ reported, Metropolitan Jovan of Kruševo and Demir Hisar said that Constantinople created "additional divisions" in world Orthodoxy by granting a tomos to the OCU.
