Poroshenko parrots Old Calendarist talking points, calls for ROC to show its tomos “signed by Stalin”

Vinnitsa, Ukraine, January 14, 2019

Photo: president.gov.ua Photo: president.gov.ua
    

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and “Metropolitan” Epiphany Dumenko, the primate of the new nationalist church, are currently in the midst of a victory lap around Ukraine to celebrate the new structure under the sway of Constantinople.

Poroshenko and Dumenko made a stop in Vinnitsa on their victory tour, bringing the tomos granted by Constantinople to the Holy Transfiguration Cathedral, which was seized by the apostate Simeon Shostatsky with the blessing of Patriarch Bartholomew. During a speech in Vinnitsa, the President publicly questioned the canonicity of the Moscow Patriarchate, according to the official website of the President of Ukraine.

Speaking of the nationalist church created by Constantinople, which also wrote the statutes for the new structure, Poroshenko said: “And now our church is canonical. Let [the Moscow Patriarchate] now understand, let them show their tomos… And where is their tomos? Signed by Stalin? It all began from that. The truth cannot hide.”

Interestingly, this statement appears in the Ukrainian and Russian versions of the reports on the President’s website, but not in the English version.

“No one has the right to close the doors of a church of God to Ukrainians or to determine who is canonical and who is not canonical,” Poroshenko insisted, seemingly ignoring the fact that the canonical Ukrainian Church serves and is served by Ukrainians who are appointed to their positions by the Ukrainian Holy Synod based in Kiev.

In claiming that the modern Moscow Patriarchate, of which Poroshenko was a member until his political career began, began with Stalin, the Ukrainian head of state is parroting the claims of the most fringe Old Calendarists groups who proclaim that the Orthodox Churches are graceless.

For instance, the website of the “Genuine Orthodox Church of America,” under the infamous Gregory of Denver who fancies himself the last true Orthodox bishop on earth, states on the page “Timeline of the Church of the Genuine Orthodox Christians of Russia and Greece and the Great Apostasy of Orthodoxy in the 20th Century”:

  • September 8, 1943 - By order of Stalin, without discussion or dissent, Met. Sergius Stragorodsky is declared “Patriarch” by a newly-created puppet synod of his two fellow sergianist bishops and a handful of renovationist protopriests ordained by them just recently for this purpose. In years to come many people at home and abroad will be deceived and brought to perish by this absolute creature, mouthpiece, and organ of the KGB, the false-Patriarchate of Moscow, founded not by the Church nor within the Church but by Stalin and within a directorate of the KGB.

  • May 15, 1944 - February 2, 1945 - The Stalin-created false-Moscow Patriarchate’s “Patriarch” Sergius Stragorodsky dies. On the orders of Stalin, his fellow-Stalinist crony Alexis Simansky is “elected”.

The website also has an entire page dedicated to the ecumenism of Patriarch Bartholomew, a man who, on the other hand, Poroshenko, while in Vinnitsa, praised for his “faith, wisdom, courage, and determination.”

The gramota of autocephaly of the Russian Orthodox Church. Photo: svyatayarus.ru The gramota of autocephaly of the Russian Orthodox Church. Photo: svyatayarus.ru
Moreover, in questioning the canonicity and autocephaly of the Russian Orthodox Church, Poroshenko is, in fact, questioning an act of the Ecumenical Patriarchate that he praises so highly, which formally recognized the autocephaly of the Russian Church in 1589, granting a gramota rather than a tomos, though its function was the same. This recognition was confirmed in 1593 by a council of the Patriarchs of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem.

Likewise, the Patriarchate of Constantinople has no tomos of autocephaly. The practice of granting a tomos of autocephaly began mainly in the 19th century.

In its turn, the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church was granted autonomy by the Bishops’ Council of the Russian Orthodox Church of October 25-27, 1990, with a gramota of autonomy being given the next day.

Of course, neither the 1589 nor the 1990 document bears the signature of Stalin.

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1/14/2019

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