Phanar’s head: the recognition of OCU contributes to "unity of Orthodoxy"

Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople. Photo: Facebook

On March 8, 2020, Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople said in the Sunday Message of Orthodoxy that the recognition of the OCU by the Local Orthodox Churches should serve the cause of the unity of Orthodoxy, the website Оrthodoxia.info.

According to him, the Ecumenical Patriarchate's grant of the Tomos of autocephaly to the OCU is "an expression of faithfulness to the Fathers' Tradition, genuine ecclesiastical self-awareness, and pastoral responsibility”.

The Phanar’s head believes that the "autocephaly" of the OCU "restored their righteousness to the normal responsibility of the First Orthodox Church of Orthodoxy and highlighted the indescribable, under ecclesiastical congregations fortified and long-standing ecclesiastical practice”.

He also believes that the negative “reaction to the Ukrainian autocephaly has no normal and ecclesiastical basis, but it is the result of an outdated and quite damaging transformation of the Church" into a worldly foundation.

The Patriarch of Constantinople also believes that the non-recognition of the OCU " ignores Eucharistic ecclesiology and the synodic identity of the Church ".

In his view, “the recognition of the Autocephalous Church of Ukraine by the other Orthodox Churches is an essential contribution to the cause of the unity of Orthodoxy, as a practical consequence and expression of its ecclesiology”.

As reported earlier, Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople, during a meeting with the Primate of the Cyprus Church, Archbishop Chrysostomos, said that those who demanded the convening of the Pan-Orthodox Council on the "Ukrainian issue" should have come to the Crete Council in 2016.

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