Crete, November 29, 2019
Photo: romfea.gr
On November 19, His Eminence Metropolitan Agafangel of Odessa of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church wrote an open letter to his fellow hierarch and personal friend Patriarch Theodoros of Alexandria, calling on him to rethink his position on the “Orthodox Church of Ukraine,” created by Constantinople and former President Petro Poroshenko of Ukraine.
Although the letter was addressed to Pat. Theodoros, Metropolitan Alexandros of Nigeria of the Patriarchate of Alexandria took it upon himself to respond to Met. Agafangel in a statement published by Romfea on November 23.
In his statement, Met. Alexandros accuses Met. Agafangel of insulting Pat. Theodoros under the influence of slander and lies. Moreover, he accuses Met. Agafangel, and by extension the entire canonical Ukrainian Church, of creating the schism by refusing to recognize the Constantinople-created OCU.
“I will no longer tolerate insults against our Ecumenical Patriarch,” Met. Alexandros writes.
Met. Agafangel should “look at the world in a different way, not only from the Russian point of view,” Met. Alexandros believes. The Patriarchate of Constantinople and the hierarchs that support its actions tend to view the Ukrainian issue as an ethnic struggle instead of examining it from a spiritual and canonical point of view.
Met. Alexandros also responded to a letter addressed to another hierarch in September. His Eminence Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, the Chairman of the Department for External Church Relations, wrote to Metropolitan Chrysostomos of Mozambique after he concelebrated with Ukrainian schismatics, expressing the Russian Church’s sadness at the news.
Several Alexandrian hierarchs took it upon themselves to respond, including Met. Alexandros, who mocked Met. Hilarion, sarcastically calling him a “master of theology,” and accused him of insulting all hierarchs of the Alexandrian Throne.
However, just three years ago, in the summer of 2016, Met. Alexandros seemed to have a very different view of the Ukrainian schismatics.
In a brief interview at the Council of Crete, Met. Alexandros addressed the issue of government interference in the Church in response to the Ukrainian Parliament’s petition at that time for the Council to consider granting autocephaly to a Ukrainian church. At that time, he recognized only His Beatitude Metropolitan Onuphry of Kiev and All Ukraine as the canonical head of the Ukrainian Church, which was also the position of all the primates of the Local Churches, including Pat. Bartholomew.
Met. Alexandros begins by noting that the hierarchs were informed of the Parliament’s request but hadn’t had an opportunity to discuss it with Patriarch Theodoros, and thus he is expressing his personal view. Nevertheless, the position he offers is the general position of Orthodox hierarchs and primates, he states.
“Politics should remain outside the Church. But I think the Patriarch of Constantinople has already spoken on the issue of Ukraine at the Synaxis of the Primates of all the Churches in Geneva, expressing the opinion of all the primates, so I don’t think there is such a question at the moment,” the hierarch of Nigeria stated.
At the Synaxis of Primates in Switzerland from January 21 to 27, 2016, where the heads of the Local Churches gathered in preparation for that summer’s Crete Council, Pat. Bartholomew stated on behalf of all the primates: “We all recognize Metropolitan Onuphry as the sole canonical head of Orthodoxy in Ukraine.”
His Beatitude Metropolitan Rostislav of the Czech Lands and Slovakia recalled this confession by Pat. Bartholomew in his letter to His Holiness Patriarch Kirill last October.
By the fall of 2018, Pat. Bartholomew had changed his mind, telling Met. Onuphry that he was no longer the canonical hierarch in Kiev.
Fr. Alexander Karloutsos of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, who was the assistant to then-Archbishop Demetrios for public affairs and his representative to the White House and Congress, also confessed at the Crete Council that the Patriarchate of Constantinople recognized Ukraine as the canonical territory of the Russian Church, under Pat. Kirill, and that “politics should have nothing to do with Church recognition.”
