The Russian Orthodox Church is cutting ties with the Constantinople Patriarch Bartholomew I after a dispute over the Patriarch’s plans to recognise a new pro-Western Ukrainian branch of the church.
Patriarch Bartholomew, the Archbishop of Constantinople and “first among equals”, de facto head, of the 300 million Christians in the Orthodox church, announced he was sending two representatives to Ukraine earlier this month to meet with representatives of Kiev Patriarchate within a “framework of preparations” for granting “autocephaly” – independence – to the Orthodox Church in Ukraine.
The move, which came after Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko appealed to Patrirach Bartholomew for church independence last April, reportedly sparked outrage in Moscow – where Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill is a close ally of President Putin – and last week the church announced it would no longer conduct joint services with representatives of the Patriarchate of Constantinople and that Patriarch Kirill would stop mentioning Bartholomew in his prayers.
Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, the head of external relations for the Russian Orthodox Church, was reported as saying that the moves were “roughly equivalent to cutting diplomatic ties” and did “not mean a complete break of the Eucharistic communion”.
The split in the Ukrainian Orthodox church between what is sometimes called the Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Moscow Patriarchate and the Kiev Patriarchate, which has as yet no international recognition, first emerged after Ukraine gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 and has been deepened following the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2011 and the separatist uprising in eastern Ukraine in 2014.
Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, this week commented on the split. Speaking in a tweet on Monday, he said: “We are deeply saddened by the difficulties in relations between the Orthodox Patriarchates in Moscow and Constantinople, and their potential impact on Orthodox world. We are offering heartfelt prayers for a peaceful outcome.”
