Three clerics of the Greek Orthodox Church, the abbot of the of Monastery of the Holy Prophet Elijah from the island of Hydra Archimandrite Theologos Grigoriatis, Archpriest Nicholas Savvopoulos, former representative of the Greek Orthodox Church to the European Union, and Hieromonk Hierotheos Savvopoulos were on pilgrimage to Kiev recently with the blessing of Metropolitan Ephraim of Hydra, Spetses, and Aegina.
On September 22, they concelebrated with His Beatitude Metropolitan Onuphry of Kiev and All Ukraine during the Divine Liturgy in the Kiev Caves Lavra. After the Divine service, they congratulated the primate of the UOC and conveyed to him the disquiet of the Orthodox clergy and laity of Greece about the crisis within Orthodoxy in connection with events in Ukraine.
The clerics of the Greek Church entreated the faithful of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church to stand with His Beatitude Metropolitan Onuphry and maintain fidelity to the Church, which they inherited from their ancestors, and where they receive spiritual nourishment.
Archimandrite Theologos, Archpriest Nicholas, and Hieromonk Hierotheos also appealed to the bishops of their Church before the gathering of the hierarchs and a possible decision regarding the Ukrainian Church question.
As OrthoChristian has reported, Met. Ephraim was very displeased with the clerics, claiming they had deceived him in asking for a blessing to go on pilgrimage without mentioning their letter, and threatening them with canonical punishments. He accused the fathers of disparaging the Patriarchate of Constantinople and declaring loyalty to the Moscow Patriarchate, although, as can be seen in the translation below, they said absolutely nothing about declaring loyalty to any patriarchate.
His Eminence Metropolitan Seraphim of Kythira, also of the Greek Church, then came to their defense, saying: “It is unacceptable that worthy clergy are being persecuted because they publicly displayed their respect for the Holy Canons and Canonical Order of the Church which in the matter of Ukraine have been disrupted in many ways.”
Their letter was originally published online in Greek on Romfea.
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Your Beatitude, Metropolitan Onuphry of Kiev and All Ukraine!
It is with special emotion that we, humble pilgrims, are within the territory of the much-suffering Ukrainian Orthodox Church today.
We have come from Greece and convey to you a message of love in Christ and Orthodox brotherhood.
On this short pilgrimage to the holy sites of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, we asked for and received your blessing, as the only pan-Orthodox-recognized canonical primate, Metropolitan of Kiev and All Ukraine.
But in addition to your canonically undeniable status in the Orthodox world, we must recognize that you have also won the hearts of faithful Orthodox Christians in Greece, who look upon your face with the greatest of reverence because of your particular spirituality and many virtues, which are manifested in the character and discernment found in your words and actions in the face of such unjust attacks that you are experiencing in recent times.
We on Aegina belatedly learned of your visit to the Monastery of St. Nektarios because the fathers who met you could hardly have recognized in you a primate, as you decided to venerate St. Nektarios as a humble monk, without noisy publicity and accompaniment.
Your Beatitude, we thank you for your example. Your demeanor, manifesting a highly spiritual mindset, inspires and guides us.
Today we must tell you that during this pilgrimage we have experienced the podvig that the faithful Orthodox people of Ukraine undertake to remain in their native faith and to preserve the places of worship inherited from their ancestors.
With our own eyes we have seen the pain and anxiety of the faithful Orthodox Ukrainians, and we have also seen the bewilderment in their eyes, when they appeal to us who have come from Greece, asking us a serious question: Why? One big “WHY?”
And this “why,” as we have seen, is experienced daily by millions of Orthodox.
Why this persecution, and even with the signature of a brotherly hand?
Why can’t they be free and believe and be in communion with the Church that they received from their ancestors and in which they have been nurtured from childhood?
Why should the priests and faithful be forcibly removed from their churches by the interference of politicians in unjust Church elections?
We should assure everyone from the outset of our great respect and love for the Ecumenical Patriarchate and especially for the Ecumenical Patriarch, as for all the bishops of the Orthodox Church, set in the image and in the place of Christ.
But as clergy of the Orthodox Church, we can speak and argue on the basic principles, dogmas, and canons of the age-old Patristic Tradition of our Church.
Today we must confess to you that during this time of Golgotha, which the Ukrainian Orthodox Church is ascending, the faithful people and clergy of Greece are anxiously following the development of events and are praying for the establishment of peace, reconciliation, and prayer in the souls of men, because our faith should lead to such steps.
Even a freshman seminarian well knows that sinfulness as a property of human nature can be healed by repentance, and man can come to salvation.
He also knows that the creation of a schism, perseverance in it, and joining it without repentance are never healed and are strictly condemned by the Church canons, and undoubtedly lead to the destruction of the soul.
As a result, ecclesiastical communion with people who created a schism and were defrocked by the Church, especially when this defrocking was accepted by the entire Church, and also concelebration with people having no canonical ordination within the Church, are condemned by the Church canons as participation in the schism and can be regarded as an extreme expression of egotism, surely leading to spiritual death.
Thus, it is easy to see what happened as a kind of innovation, after diverse religious elements gathered in Kiev, having no relation to Orthodox canonicity, which can in no way be called an Orthodox Council. It is clear that the results and decision of this gathering, prepared beforehand in the cabinets of politicians, could do nothing other than create yet another church structure, a structure of an unknown type, alien to the Orthodox world and its Church history until today.
And we must acknowledge that the pressure exerted with the purpose of recognizing this newly-appearing church structure is quite palpable and, by all appearances, is exerted by international political actors.
Until now, we had a worldwide united Orthodox Church and this does not seem to have pleased the promoters of globalization and those who desire, perhaps, to impose the so-called one-world religion upon the world. The unity of the Orthodox Church was a great obstacle in their eyes, and they are trying to destroy this unity from within. They want to divest the Church of the power of its word of salvation and to force it to deal with the non-essential and secondary problems of man.
It’s true, and they did a masterful job. Having studied Orthodox ecclesiology well, they understood that by insisting upon the recognition of this newly-appearing church establishment, they are achieving the destruction of Orthodoxy in the literal sense.
They investigated and learned that unity in the Orthodox Church is confirmed by participation in the common Eucharistic chalice. After all, that is precisely what distinguishes us from heretics with other beliefs, for whom participation in their so-called divine eucharist extends to all, even those of other faiths.
Thus, those who encourage the mutual cessation of communion and schism which, unfortunately, is coming at a quick pace, are achieving their ungodly aims.
We do not forget that the Ecumenical Patriarchate broke communion with Archbishop Christodoulos in 2004 because the hierarchs of the Greek Church elected three metropolitans for the so-called New Lands without asking the Phanar. The decision at that time to cease communion was also accompanied by the threat that, “if this ‘canonical anomaly’ continues, the Patriarchate will revoke the tomos of autocephaly of 1850.”
In all likelihood, this same threat hangs today over the hierarchs who will be called upon to work out a decision about Ukrainian autocephaly.
Some in Greece express the fear that even if this happens, that is, if we in the Orthodox Church have reached the point that decrees of 300 years ago or more, such as the Patriarchal Act of 1686 concerning the Russian Church, are groundlessly repealed, then it is possible that the refusal to recognize this newly-appearing Ukrainian church structure will be a reason to remove the Greek Church’s autocephaly of 1850.
Unfortunately, there are bishops of a similar mind who are ready to participate in anti-canonical acts, neglecting Orthodox ecclesiology, which is based on the rules of the Ecumenical and other Councils, and placing it in subordination to patriarchal decisions.
The instigators of this abnormal situation believe that by threats and force they will be able to break the resistance of those who insist upon preserving the canons.
Even today, eight months after the granting of the so-called autocephaly, and despite the fact that not a single Local Orthodox Church has recognized it, a great evil is being worked within Orthodoxy. Division and schism have begun to take root, which, if they continue to spread, will lead with mathematical precision to the final dissection of our Church, and also to the emergence of smaller schisms within the Local autocephalous Churches.
Today on Mt. Athos and in Greece, many monastery abbots, hieromonks, and other clergy refuse to concelebrate with those who have concelebrated with the schismatics.
Among the hierarchs of the Greek Orthodox Church, many are refusing to recognize or concelebrate with those who concelebrated with the schismatics. If it reaches the lower level of clergy, we will have priests who will refuse to concelebrate with anyone who has concelebrated with the schismatics.
They are also artificially cultivating imaginary tensions and division between the Greek-speaking and Slavic-speaking Orthodox Churches, having no real basis among the faithful people and clergy.
We in Greece are proud that thanks to the God-enlightened brothers from Thessaloniki, Cyril and Methodius, our Slavic brothers received the Cyrillic alphabet. And at the same time, we are grateful to our Slavic brothers because we have been spiritually nourished by, among other things, the teachings of the great theologians, teachers, authors, and writers of Russia, Serbia, and Romania.
The absolute distortion of meanings and concepts in the arguments used in favor of the schismatic structure resemble Orwellianism, that is, the propagandistic manipulation of facts and the deliberate falsification of truth. The purpose of these arguments is to confuse and disorient the Orthodox fullness.
They condemn, and rightly so, ethnophyletism, even specially organizing conferences for this purpose, and at the same time claim that every nation has the right to autocephaly. They thereby seek to dissect and divide Orthodoxy into numerous small pieces according to purely ethnophyletistic criteria.
Recently, some have declared that because we are Greeks, it is our duty to support the choice of autocephaly. If that is not ethnophyletism, then what is?
With the so-called autocephaly for the schismatics, they plant a bomb at the foundation of Orthodox unity and at the same time call for unity and peace among nations.
They concelebrate with unrepentant schismatics and embrace the Ukrainian heretics-Uniates, and at the same time condemn the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church with millions of Orthodox Christians to oblivion, and also condemn it as the instigator and culprit of the schism for not going along with the schismatics.
They brutally wound the Orthodox conciliar system, replacing the primacy of honor with the newly-formulated theory of “first without equals” (primus sine paribus), which does not exist in Orthodoxy, and at the same time assert to the Pope the value of the conciliar system.
We in Greece will follow the wise words of our wise hierarchs and teachers who have clearly spoken out, despite the pressure, against the so-called autocephaly and for the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church.
Among them are their Holinesses Patriarch Theodoros of Alexandria and Theophilos of Jerusalem;
The wise hierarch and professor Archbishop Anastasios of Tirana and All Albania, who instead of a Church received ashes but created an Orthodox miracle with new churches, institutions, schools, and hospitals, and who should be an example for emulation for all Orthodox clergy;
His Beatitude the Archbishop of Cyprus, who does not recognize the new structure in Ukraine, and also their Eminences, the Metropolitans of Cyprus Athanasios of Limassol, Nikiforos of Kykkos, and Isaiah of Tamassos;
Their Eminences Metropolitans Seraphim of Piraeus, Seraphim of Kythira, and Nektarios of Corfu;
And even the learned Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos, who, despite the fact that he considers the recognition of the autocephaly inevitable, proposes before any action from the Greek Church to ask the Ecumenical Patriarchate on the basis of which canons it restored the defrocked and excommunicated schismatics and with what Orthodox logic it received unordained bishops.
We firmly know from Church history that any conciliar decision in the Orthodox world on canonical and ecclesiological issues can have authority and power only unanimously.
Any Church that decides on these issues not unanimously, but by majority vote, will expose its own unity to the greatest danger.
On this basis, we are sure that none of the Local Churches will become an accomplice to the intra-Orthodox schism and will not create the ground for a small schism within itself by its decision.
Concluding this humble greeting, we extend a humble appeal to everyone who loves our Orthodox faith and desires its unity, and we address this appeal in particular to our bishops in Greece and throughout the entire world.
We bow and listen to the pain, weeping, grief, and tears of millions of our Orthodox brothers of Ukraine.
We beseech you: Before you make any hasty decisions, which will finally destroy Orthodox unity, answer these big questions of the faithful Orthodox Ukrainian people—questions that were posed to us:
Our Orthodox brothers, why are you at war with us?
Why do you not allow us to continue to believe in our Orthodoxy?
Why do you want to drive us out of our native Church territory?
What evil have we done and why do you condemn us to non-existence among the Orthodox?
Why do you want to lead us into schism?
Why do you equate us with those who desire evil for our holy Orthodoxy?
Why do you slander us as if we’re ethnophyletists because we believe that Orthodoxy stands above the borders between states that identify people?
Your Beatitude Metropolitan Onuphry of Kiev and All Ukraine!
With such humble reflections and perplexities we leave Kiev and return to Greece.
Allow us to express our boundless respect for you and to pray to God that He might give you strength and be your helper in your most difficult podvig.
We fervently pray that you, our Orthodox brothers of Ukraine, would preserve your faith whole in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church under the omophorion of Metropolitan Onuphry and his Holy Synod.
May the God of peace eradicate the schisms and restore the desired unity in our holy Orthodox Church. AMEN.
