Phanar: Constantinople has never given anyone the territory of Ukraine

Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople

Vladyka called Constantinople the Mother Church for Ukraine and promised a solution of the church question. Patriarch Bartholomew said this on July 1, after the funeral service was completed on the fortieth day after the unveiling of the ever-memorable Metropolitan Evangelos of Perga.

"It is logical that we as the Mother Church wish to restore the divided Church Body in Ukraine, tens of millions of believers, baptized and enlightened in the direct care and missionary work of the Ecumenical Throne," said His Holiness. "In addition, in the past the Church of Constantinople exercised its canonical rights and its pastoral care, worked and solved difficult and complicated church issues, always bearing in mind the benefits to the people of God and the preservation of the All-Orthodox unity. Suffice it to recall the recent participation and assistance of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in problems that the Сhurches of Jerusalem, Cyprus, Albania, etc. complain about. In this spirit, the Holy Christ Great Church of Constantinople, which has acted in truth in love, today is standing up for a decisive settlement of church affairs in Ukraine."

The Patriarch in his speech recalled the rights of the Ecumenical Throne in the territory of Ukraine.

"Besides, let's not forget that Constantinople has never transferred the territory of Ukraine to anyone with any Act, except for the right of consecration of the Kiev [metropolitan] in Moscow under conditions of his election in Kiev at the local Council and with the commemoration of the Ecumenical Patriarch," Patriarch Bartholomew said. "Listen, in particular, what the Tomos on autocephaly granted by the Mother Church to the Polish Church says:" It is written that separation from Our Throne of the Kiev Metropolitanate and the Orthodox Churches of Lithuania and Poland, dependent on it, and their accession to the Holy Moscow Church was in no way carried out in accordance with the normative canonical orders, and the specified in them [rights] of wide ecclesiastical independence of the Metropolitan of Kiev, who bore the title of the Exarch of the Ecumenical Throne, were not observed."

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