Phanar recognizes Mazepa anathema as non-canonical

Monument to Hetman Ivan Mazepa in Poltava

The Ecumenical Patriarchate has never recognized the canonical anathema that was imposed on the Ukrainian Hetman Ivan Mazepa by the Russian Orthodox Church for political reasons. The representative of the Ecumenical Patriarchate at the World Council of Churches in Geneva, Archbishop Job (Getcha) of Telmessos said this in an interview with Glavkom.

According to him, it was imposed on the hetman for political reasons. “Despite the impossibility of imposing the non-canonical anathema on Hetman Mazepa on the part of the Russian Church, the representatives of the Ecumenical Patriarchate did not recognize it, since it was imposed for political motives as a means of political and ideological repression and did not have any religious, theological or canonical grounds,” he said.

Archbishop Job explained that after the first demolition of the Zaporizhian Sich by the Russian troops in 1709, the Ukrainian Cossacks, which passed under the protectorate of the Crimean Khan, returned to the jurisdiction of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, and Mazepa, along with Pylyp Orlyk, were among the first to do so.

“Having emigrated to Bendery, Ivan Mazepa freely confessed to Orthodox priests of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. They consoled him on his deathbed and absolved his sins, and then performed a burial service for him. His body was buried in the Orthodox church of the town of Varnitsa, which was under the jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, and subsequently reburied in the city of Galats on the Danube River where in the central cathedral of the St. George Monastery the local metropolitan served a burial for the reposed hetman. This metropolitan was the hierarch of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. Consequently, we can say that Ivan Mazepa died as a faithful of the Mother Church, the Ecumenical Patriarchate!” the Hierarch of the Ecumenical Patriarchate emphasized.

Anathema was imposed on Hetman Mazepa by the Russian Orthodox Church on November 12, 1708, after his high treason – transfer to the side of the Swedish King Charles XII during the Northern War.

A number of public figures criticize the anathema as a political act and put forward demands for its official abolition, dictated by the policy of popularizing the personality of Mazepa.

Varnitsa is a village in the Novoanensky district of Moldova.

As reported by the UOJ, earlier Archbishop Job (Getcha) of Telmessos stated that the non-recognition of the primacy of the Patriarch of Constantinople is moving away from the Holy Scripture, and the Phanar primacy follows from the understanding of the Church in the Holy Scripture.

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