Athens, October 14, 2019
Photo: pomisna.info
The Bishops’ Council of the Greek Orthodox Church resolved to recognize the schismatic “Orthodox Church of Ukraine” on Saturday.
The Greek Church thus becomes the first Local Church other than Constantinople to recognize nationalistic OCU.
Accordingly, the creators of the schismatic organization, Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople and former President Petro Poroshenko of Ukraine, and its primate, Epiphany Dumenko, immediately offered their thanks to Archbishop Ieronymos and the bishops of the Greek Church.
Epiphany Dumenko, who was ordained in the “Kiev Patriarchte” by the anathematized “Patriarch” Philaret Denisenko, immediately sent a thank you letter to Abp. Ieronymos and the other hierarchs, which reads:
I am grateful to my Brother in Christ, His Beatitude Ieronymos, Archbishop of Athens and all Greece, President of the Holy Synod of the Church of Greece, and Brother Hierarchs of the Council of Hierarchs, for today determining to support and follow the canonical and historical decisions of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, opening the possibility of full interaction between our two Local Autocephalous Churches in all spheres.
The histories of our two ancient nations, Greece and Ukraine, include many shared pages of friendship and cooperation. The establishment of full Eucharistic unity and official relations between the Local Churches of Greece and Ukraine is a new page that will forever be bound in our history and in our hearts.
I hope that in the near future I will have the pleasure of visiting Athens, close to my heart, and personally conveying our feelings of love and respect to His Beatitude Archbishop Ieronymos, Brother Hierarchs, and the entire Church of Greece.
Patriarch Bartholomew, who together with the Synod of Constantinople decided to take the canonical jurisdiction of Ukraine away from the Moscow Patriarchate and to install a group of schismatic clergy in place of the canonical Ukrainian Church, also thanked Abp. Ieronymos, in a phone call on Saturday.
“Thank you for supporting the Ecumenical Patriarchate and for being close to the Mother Church,” he told the Archbishop in the brief phone call, reports vimaorthodoxias.gr.
The Greek outlet interprets the phone call as a message to the other primates, and especially to the Grecophone primates of Alexandria, Jerusalem, Cyprus, and Albania, who are expected to stand by Constantinople as fellow Greeks.
Pat. Bartholomew addressed the Greek Church’s decision again during the Divine Liturgy on Sunday, saying the Greek Church made an historic decision recognizing the Ecumenical Patriarchate’s exclusive right to grant autocephaly.
“We thank the Sister Church, the Church of Greece, and we are grateful to the President of the Holy Synod, Archbishop Ieronymos of Athens and of all Greece, who took the initiative and brought this to a good conclusion,” Pat. Bartholomew said.
Pat. Bartholomew refers to Abp. Ieronymos as “President of the Holy Synod” rather than as primate of the Greek Church because according to the tomos of autocephaly of the Greek Church, granted by Constantinople in 1850, he does not enjoy the full privileges of a primate.
Finally, Petro Poroshenko, the former president of Ukraine who teamed up with the Patriarchate of Constantinople to create a new church organization in Ukraine that would replace, and as he dreamed, drive out the canonical Ukrainian Church that is an autonomous body within the Moscow Patriarchate, offered his word of thanks to the Greek hierarchs.
Poroshenko, who used to be a parishioner of the canonical Church but now communes in both the schismatic OCU and the Ukrainian Greek Catholic church, wrote on his Facebook page of the “wonderful and inspiring news from Athens,” saying, “We welcome this decision of our sister Church with gratitude!”
He also thanked Pat. Bartholomew and the Church of Constantinople for its tireless work “in support of the Ukrainian Church” and expressed the belief that all Orthodox Churches will eventually recognize the OCU.
