Madrid, March 5, 2018
Photo: RIA-Novosti As they do in Ukraine, representatives of the schismatic and self-proclaimed “Kiev Patriarchate” (KP) are trying to create communities in Europe while bringing division and schism into the canonical Churches present in Western European countries as well. As The Union of Orthodox Journalists reports, a scandal recently erupted between the KP and the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Madrid.
Members of the KP have sown division among Ukrainians who attend the Churches of St. Andrew the First-Called and of the Great Marty Demetrios of Thessaloniki, both of which belong to the Ecumenical Patriarchate. The schismatics created their own community with some of the parishioners of both churches, establishing themselves on the premises of the Ecumenical Missionary Center of Madrid.
The schismatics’ behavior is particularly interesting, given that hierarchs of the Ecumenical Patriarchate have maintained friendly relations with the KP schismatics, who have repeatedly appealed to His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew to grant autocephaly to the KP.
Metropolitan Polycarp of Spain and Portugal has informed the local Catholic bishop that the KP community has no association with the canonical Church, after which the KP community was asked to leave the Missionary Center.
The schismatics subsequently settled into a basement room in a residential building in Madrid.
