Kiev, October 8, 2026
Photo: uoj.news
His Eminence Metropolitan Anthony of Boryspil, Chancellor of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church, says a leaked Constantinople document on the creation of the schismatic “Orthodox Church of Ukraine” shows fear, surveillance and pressure, and no sign of the Holy Spirit, in a new article published by the Union of Orthodox Journalists reflecting on the events of December 2018.
The 2-18 document, a chronicle addressed to Patriarch Bartholomew, describes the week in which the OCU was established. Metropolitan Anthony says such texts are valuable because they were written “not for posterity, but for their contemporaries,” with no attempt to embellish them. He says the question it raises “is neither a political nor even canonical question, but a spiritual one.”
Citing the Apostolic Council in Jerusalem and Pentecost, Metropolitan Anthony notes that in Scripture, the Spirit’s presence is marked by free debate and unity of mind. By contrast, he points to the report’s account of Constantinople’s exarchs facing pressure from Ukrainian authorities, fearing their phones were tapped, switching to handwritten notes, and being told they were “detained and had been forbidden to leave the country.”
“You must agree that this bears little resemblance to the description of the Council of the Apostles in the Book of Acts,” he writes. He adds that “grace is bestowed by God, not by the directives of authorities or security services.”
Metropolitan Anthony also points to a phone call in which Patriarch Bartholomew tells President Poroshenko that “you’re not ready for autocephaly,” and Poroshenko responds by raising the possibility of military intervention if the council doesn't take place. The next day, autocephaly was granted. A Council convened under pressure from secular authorities, he says, is “the clearest evidence of just how ready the participants themselves were” to receive it.
He devotes particular attention to an episode in which a Constantinople delegation visited the Turkish ambassador. According to the report, the ambassador said the Local Churches aren’t equal, and the delegation acknowledged the truth of his statement. Metropolitan Anthony says critics of “Eastern papism” from Serbia, Bulgaria, Antioch, Poland, the Czech Lands and Slovakia, and Mt. Athos were told they were exaggerating. “How are we to interpret this agreement: as a ‘diplomatic’ maneuver or as the actual position of the Phanar?” he asks, adding, “We would like to hear an answer to this question.”
The Metropolitan also criticizes the report’s claim that the Mother Church “rebaptized the Ukrainian people,” noting that the Church confesses “one baptism for the remission of sins” and that Ukraine received Baptism in the Dnieper over a thousand years ago. He further points to a Constantinople representative’s reference to an “ulterior consideration” of leaving the Ukrainian side with no “road of retreat.”
“Can the edifice of the Church truly be built upon such duplicity?” he asks.
Metropolitan Anthony says that several days after the report’s publication, the Patriarchate of Constantinople and the hierarch to whom the document is attributed remain silent. He notes that for eight years, the UOC has waited for a single word from the Phanar about seized churches, anti-church laws, beaten parishioners, prosecuted priests and conscripted monks.
“Not a single word of condemnation has been voiced,” he writes.
He stresses that the report changes nothing for the UOC, which continues to face oppression, while courts hear the case on its banning and churches are seized. “The Church cannot be created by government decree, just as it cannot be destroyed by a court ruling,” he writes.
Metropolitan Anthony appeals to all Local Churches, both those that recognized the OCU and those that haven’t, to read the document “not as journalists or diplomats, but as Christians” and to begin an open, Pan-Orthodox discussion. To the UOC’s faithful, he says, “do not render evil for evil; pray for those who persecute and curse you; preserve unity.”
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