Kiev, November 17, 2020
Photo: ukranews.com
The Ukrainian Orthodox Church is against the proposed visit of Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople to Ukraine, according to His Eminence Metropolitan Anthony of Boryspil and Brovary, the Chancellor of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church under His Beatitude Metropolitan Onuphry of Kiev and All Ukraine.
Speaking on the Church and Society program on the channel Glas, Met. Anthony spoke of the concern that such a visit would cause new confrontations in society, emphasizing that President Vladimir Zelensky should have taken the internal Ukrainian situation into account before inviting the foreign hierarch during his visit to Istanbul last month.
The 30th anniversary of Ukrainian independence, to be celebrated on August 24, 2021, was pinpointed as a possible date for his visit.
Internal strife and enmity increased exponentially in Ukraine after the Pat. Bartholomew and former President Petro Poroshenko created the so-called “Orthodox Church in Ukraine” in 2018. Schismatic activists and terrorists, motivated by ethnic hatred against their fellow Ukrainians (whom they insist are “Muscovites”), have physically attacked bishops, priests, monks, nuns, men, women, and grandmothers of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church while violently seizing hundreds of churches to be transferred to the Constantinople’s OCU project.
“Vladimir Zelensky saying that Patriarch Bartholomew cares about peace in Ukraine sounds quite dissonant,” Met. Anthony commented.
“Because, if he cares about peace in Ukraine, we haven’t found a single instance when Patriarch Bartholomew, knowing the real situation in Ukraine, could have somehow prevented what was happening. I mean the seizures of our churches—the raiding seizures and the illegal re-registrations. And all of this happened precisely on the basis of those actions—illegal actions, I emphasize—of Patriarch Bartholomew in Ukrainian Orthodoxy,” Met. Anthony commented.
Pat. Bartholomew’s illegal “intervention led to a confrontation, to the seizure of our churches, to the beating of our parishioners, our clergy,” the Metropolitan stressed.
“Therefore, our position is clear: We are against Patriarch Bartholomew coming to Ukraine, because we can foresee that his arrival will not serve for peace in Ukraine, but could become a new impetus for more global confrontations,” Met. Anthony added.
The president should take care that his visits and meetings do not lead to more confrontations between believers in Ukraine, Met. Anthony stressed. And in any case, the Ukrainian constitution guarantees the separation of Church and state, he reminded. “Therefore, any interference of statesmen in the internal life of the Church contradicts our basic law,” he said.
And according to the sacred canons, a hierarch can only visit the canonical territory of another hierarch by invitation. In a recent interview, Abbess Seraphim (Shevchik), head of the Ukrainian Church’s Synodal Church and Culture Department, recalled how Pat. Bartholomew already flouted this rule when he visited Ukraine in 2008, without an ecclesiastical invitation.
And in 2018, Pat. Bartholomew sent two Exarchs into Ukraine to prepare for the “unification council” that was held in December of that year, which resulted in the creation of the schismatic “Orthodox Church of Ukraine.” In response, the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church resolved that His Holiness Patriarch Kirill would cease commemorating Pat. Bartholomew in the Divine Liturgy, as a protest against the invasion of its canonical territory.
However, Pat. Bartholomew was not concerned by this tension in Church relations, and continued with his plan to create the OCU on the territory of the canonical Ukrainian Church, which led to a full break in communion between the Churches of Russia and Constantinople.
