Kykkos, Cyprus, November 17, 2020
Photo: spzh.news
His Eminence Metropolitan Nikiforos of Kykkos of the Orthodox Church of Cyprus recently published a book examining the burning Ukrainian issue from the point of view of the sacred canons of the Church.
Met. Nikiforos is one of the four Cypriot hierarchs that openly rejected Archbishop Chrysostomos’ unilateral decision to recognize the schismatic “Orthodox Church of Ukraine.”
His book, The Modern Ukrainian Question and its Solution According to the Divine and Sacred Canons, examines several questions:
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Which Patriarchate’s ecclesiastical jurisdiction does Ukraine belong to?
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Who has the right to grant autocephaly and under what conditions?
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Does the Ecumenical Patriarchate have the canonical right to accept appeals from clerics outside its jurisdiction?
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Who is the head of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church?
It is expected that the 233-page book will be translated from Greek into other languages of the Local Orthodox Churches.
In the meantime, the Department of External Church Relations of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church has published the main conclusions from the book, with the permission of Met. Nikiforos.
The Metropolitan’s 10 conclusions are:
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Constantinople’s sudden canceling of the 1686 gramota that transferred the Kiev Metropolis to the Russian Orthodox is invalid. No one has ever doubted that Ukraine is the ecclesiastical territory of the Russian Church.
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Granting autocephaly to schismatics without the consent of the Russian Church and the other Local Churches is canonically unjustifiable.
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The lifting of the anathemas against the schismatics without their repentance and the idea that the Patriarch of Constantinople can hear appeals from clerics of any jurisdiction contradict the canons, and thus the autocephaly of the OCU has no canonical force.
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The granting of autocephaly to the Ukrainian schismatics led to less unity, not more, despite Constantinople’s claims.
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Constantinople’s unilateral actions threaten Orthodox unity with a possible schism.
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The Russian Church was canonically justified in breaking communion with the Patriarchate of Constantinople.
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Constantinople’s teaching of being the “first without equals” violates the conciliarity of the Church.
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Christ is the only Head of the Church, not the Patriarch of Constantinople.
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Constantinople undoubtedly violated the principle of conciliarity by its actions in Ukraine.
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The Greek-speaking Churches must support the canonical rights of the Russian Church, lest they fall into the condemned heresy of ethnophyletism.
OrthoChristian will publish a full translation of the Metropolitan’s conclusions tomorrow.
