Mt. Athos, December 14, 2020
Answering questions during a live broadcast organized on December 10 by the Greek outlet Pemptousia, Abbot Ephraim of Vatopedi, the largest and most influential of the 20 ruling monasteries on Mt. Athos, said that Mt. Athos cannot influence the Ukrainian Church conflict between the Patriarchates of Constantinople and Moscow.
In his opinion, the conflict is above the monks’ pay grade, and all they can do is pray for the return of Church unity. Video of Abbot Ephraim’s talk is available on the YouTube channel of the Tsar’s Cross Movement.
However, not all were persuaded by Abbot Ephraim’s words, which caused pain among the faithful of the Ukrainian Church. In a statement on his Telegram channel, His Eminence Metropolitan Luke of Zaporozhye offered a sharp reply, explaining what Fr. Ephraim could do in the present situation.
Recall that Constantinople earlier threatened Abbot Ephraim with suspension from the priesthood if he did not attend the enthronement of Epiphany Dumenko as head of the schismatic “Orthodox Church of Ukraine” in Kiev in January 2019. In the end, Fr. Ephraim suffered a heart attack from the pressure he was under, but another monk from Vatopedi still participated in the Liturgy.
Answering a question about the confusion of the faithful regarding Mt. Athos’ stance in the Ukrainian Church conflict during his presentation, Abbot Ephraim emphasized that “Athos is for all” and criticized the Russian Church’s current policy whereby members of the Russian Church cannot commune on Mt. Athos, as is it under the jurisdiction of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, except at the Russian-tradition St. Panteleimon’s Monastery.
“This is strange, because the Russian monastery is also under the jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarch,” the abbot said, noting the inconsistency of the Russian Church’s stance. “Patriarch Bartholomew is commemorated there just as in the other monasteries of the Holy Mountain. For us, it remains unclear why people can go to this monastery but not to others, while the Liturgy is the same everywhere. This is wrong both from the ecclesiological and the dogmatic point of view.”
The abbot again emphasized that Mt. Athos is part of the Patriarchate of Constantinople and posed a question to his Russian audience: “If any of the bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church went against the Patriarch of Moscow, how would he react?”
Likewise, the Athonite monastics also obey their Patriarch, Abbot Ephraim said, “But that does not mean we have stopped loving Russians.”
“Unfortunately, we can’t help solve this problem. It’s on another level—it’s a conflict of two Synods, two Churches—Moscow and the Ecumenical Patriarchate. We pray that unity will return, and we are doing everything in our power,” Archimandrite Ephraim explained.
Despite the current schism, all Local Churches are in need of Mt. Athos, the abbot said.
“Hierarchically, Mt. Athos is subordinate to the Ecumenical Patriarchate, but it belongs to the whole of Orthodoxy; the Local Churches should understand this. I communicate with spiritual fathers of all levels and I know how contact with Mt. Athos helps them, and how they have radically changed because of this,” the Vatopedi head said.
Conversely, in Met. Luke’s view, the matter does concern Mt. Athos, and indeed the entire Church, as it concerns the violation of the Church’s canonical order. Moreover, Church history shows us exactly what role the Athonite monks could play in the conflict, Met. Luke argues.
“What a sad sight!” Met. Luke laments. “On the one hand, captured churches, beaten people, altars and Holy Gifts thrown into the mud on the street, and on the other hand, comely elders smiling sweetly and talking about the universal love of God and the need for unity and spiritual peace. What is this? Is it cunning, or unwillingness to know the truth? Or is it a betrayal, clothed in the robes of obedience?”
Met. Luke recalls how the Ukrainian Church considered Abbot Ephraim a confessor and prayed for him during his persecutorial imprisonment several years ago. “And what do we see now? A man who was going to participate in the enthronement of Epiphany (Sergei) Dumenko.”
“Then he wound up in his hospital, and only watched on TV as Christ is crucified in my homeland with the participation of his representative, and that means, by his hands too,” Met. Luke writes. Then Abbot Ephraim allowed the schismatics to serve Liturgy in his monastery, Met. Luke notes.
“He says high words about love, but at the same time supports those who throw explosives into the home of our priests, who kick matushkas and their young children out onto the street, who rend the Body of Christ—the Church—to pieces,” the Zaporozhye hierarch reflects.
And in his obedience to Pat. Bartholomew, “the heretic in Istanbul,” as Met. Luke calls him, Abbot Ephraim has ceased to be obedient to the Church, the Metropolitan argues. “After all, Church rules say that obedience to the hierarchy ends where the canons of Orthodoxy are violated. Thus, in his obedience, Fr. Ephraim has supported papism, ethnophyletism, and the other heresies that his Phanar boss promotes today.”
Abbot Ephraim is being sly when he says the Ukrainian conflict is between two Synods, “because we are talking about the violation of the canonical order of the entire universal Church, which brought a break in the unity of the entire Body of Christ on Earth!” Met. Luke contends.
And answering what Fr. Ephraim could have done, Met. Luke writes:
He could have been the new Maximus the Confessor or Mark of Ephesus, but he didn’t want to. Apparently, the softness of the abbot’s chair and the gilding of the abbot’s staff were dearer to Fr. Ephraim than Truth and love for Christ. It’s a pity, a great pity, that in the respected abbot, the genetics of sin have won over the new man in Christ. After all, he had the chance to become a holy confessor of the faith of Christ during his lifetime, but it tuns out he chose obedience to the Istanbul bandit…
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