August 8, 2025
Photo: vimaorthodoxias.gr
Metropolitan Panteleimon of Antinoes, a retired hierarch of the Patriarchate of Alexandria, has issued a strong rebuke of Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople following the latter’s keynote address at the Meeting of the World Council of Religions for Peace in Istanbul on July 29.
In his statement published by Vima Orthodoxias, Met. Panteleimon accuses the Patriarch of promoting views that “God is the same in all religions,” calling such positions “purely ecumenist, heretical and delusional.”
Pat. Bartholomew’s speech, titled “Contradictions and Prerequisites of Interreligious Dialogue,” presented a framework for interfaith cooperation called the “Common Sacred Worldview.” This framework described “the Sacred itself, the ultimate, absolute reality, which is expressed in various ways, as God, Allah, Brahman or as the Luminous Void.”
The Patriarch emphasized that “the encounter of the different religious traditions, each one a bearer of a unique experience of the Sacred, becomes the necessary condition for the confrontation with a globalised meaninglessness.” He argued for religions to work together based on shared values of “love, compassion, mercy, forgiveness and self-sacrifice.”
At the same time, the Patriarch stated that this framework was “not an attempt to create a new, syncretistic religion” and that each tradition should “preserve its distinct identity.” He called for religions to find common ground against what he termed “materialistic reductionism,” to form a global alliance of conscience.
Met. Panteleimon firmly rejects this approach, asserting the traditional Orthodox position that “there are not many gods, but ONE is GOD, the Creator of Heaven and earth and all that is contained within them.”
The Metropolitan declares that “neither Allah, nor Brahman, nor Buddha are gods,” calling them “creations of human thought, of human organisms and philosophical systems.” He cites the Prophet David, noting that Scripture “clearly names the ‘gods’ of the nations as ‘demons.’“
“There is no other God, except only the HOLY TRINITY, the Father and the Son and the All-Holy Spirit,” Met. Panteleimon states, emphasizing that “all the holy Apostles and Fathers of the Orthodox Church confessed and proclaimed this God.”
Met. Panteleimon concludes his statement by calling for prayers “for the Patriarchs, Metropolitans, abbots, priests, hieromonks and faithful Christians who have been swept up in the delusions of Ecumenism, so that they may rightly divide the word of the holy faith of the Orthodox which preserves the Truth.”
Met. Panteleimon has also condemned Constantinople’s creation of the schismatic “Orthodox Church of Ukraine” and its recognition by the Patriarch of Alexandria and others.
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