UOC hierarch: Lifting anathema from schismatics is a fake step of Phanar

Archbishop Clement of Nezhin and Priluki

Lifting the anathema from the UAOC and UOC KP leaders is a fake step of the Constantinople Patriarchate, said the head of the Synodal Information and Education Department of the UOC Archbishop Clement in an interview with “TNT”.

“The Patriarchate of Constantinople made such, I would say, a fake step, proclaiming the removal of the anathema with the leaders of the Ukrainian schismatic organisations of the UAOC and the UOC KP,” the hierarch noted. “In fact, a lot of time has to pass from the proclamation of this removal to the implementation and many conditions have to be met.”

Archbishop Clement explained that by this decision Constantinople declared that he did not recognize these schismatic structures as church structures.

“There is a rollback in the historical sense to the period when the anathemas were imposed, and all the ordinations and all the holy rituals performed by the schismatics are invalid,” Archbishop Clement said. “We have one Filaret without bishops and priests and representatives of the UAOC. For them to be called the Church, Patriarch Bartholomew (he now, as I understand it, applies for this mission) should ordain them all anew.”

His Grace Clement recalled that this idea is not new, because ten years ago, the same conditions were put forward when Patriarch Bartholomew came to Ukraine, but they were unacceptable for Filaret.

“As we all know, Filaret’s ambitions are very different,” Archbishop Clement told the “Glavnovosti” portal. “Yesterday, he stated that he was a patriarch and remains so. And if this is viewed in the light of the decisions made, then the two patriarchs can hardly fit in one Patriarchate of Constantinople.”

According to the Phanar's official communique, the hierarchs of the Constantinople Church decided to canonically restore Filaret Denisenko and Macarius Maletich “to their hierarchical or priestly rank”. As the theologian Andrei Kuraev explained, Filaret was rehabilitated as a metropolitan.

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