The reason why is yesterday’s decision of the Holy Synod of the Church of Cyprus during which they recognised the autocephaly of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine. The country’s commerce, industry and shipping were in our hands. At the same time, he restored to communion Metropolitan Filaret, head of the UOC-KP, and also revoked the right, granted in 1686, of the Russian Patriarch to consecrate the Metropolitan of Kyiv. These canonical decrees were not imposed on the other patriarchs when they did not take part in the permanent council, but they were willingly welcomed because they were truly wise, inspired and beneficial for the life and salvation of the Christian people. Thus, at a time when the Russian Church, subject to trial, was fighting for her very existence, parallel to activities by the Catholic Church to attract Orthodox Russians to Catholicism, the Ecumenical Patriarchate, under Meletios, did not hesitate to annex Russian eparchies located outside of Soviet Russia. After the establishment of Constantinople and its proclamation as capital of the Roman Empire, the need was gradually felt to honor it from the ecclesiastical point of view. What must first draw attention is that these tendencies of the Ecumenical Patriarchate appeared as soon as it entirely lost– on account of our many sins, we, the shepherds of the Church of Christ– the eparchies “of Pontus, Asia, and Thrace” that the canons of the Ecumenical Councils granted it, a loss sustained following the war in Asia Minor between Greece and Turkey, which left the shepherds of these dioceses without flocks. Metropolitan Dorotheos of Prusa, Locum Tenens of the Ecumenical Patriarchate from 1918-21. The patriarchate’s intervention in politics. The four patriarchs are equal in dignity, in no way is one inferior to another. "If you don't want to meet a person, then don't meet them. To this question, the late locum tenens said nothing. ), Archimandrite Kallistos claims that Canons 9 and 17 of the Fourth Ecumenical Council grant the Ecumenical Patriarch supremacy over the other patriarchs. Moreover, would it not be against all logic, at a moment when the Ecumenical Patriarchate is undergoing an ordeal and the enemy of all good has deprived it of all its ancient glory and humiliated it before the world? There were Greek ministers in Turkey and Greek ambassadors to the European courts. Patriarch Photius of Alexandria (1900-1925), Just as the intrusions of the Ecumenical Patriarchate into Russian ecclesiastical territories were anti-canonical– and the Patriarchate of Russia has started to denounce them to the universal Church– so too, and for the same reasons, was its intrusion into the communities of Eastern and Southern Africa anti-canonical. The Ecumenical Patriarch, in the Tomos of 1908, by which he granted spiritual oversight of the churches of the diaspora to the Church of Greece, formulates the same claim in these terms: “It is clear that neither the very holy Church of Greece, which our patriarchal throne has made autocephalous with defined boundaries, nor any other church has been able to extend its spiritual authority canonically beyond its own borders. Articles on OrthodoxHistory.org are Copyright © 2009-2021 by the original authors. As we have at our disposal two sources of ecclesiastical law, the canons of the Church and her practice, we will resort to them to determine to what degree the Ecumenical Patriarchate has the right to claim to be superior to the other patriarchates, as we have described above. But does history, particularly after the schism, provide some facts from which one might conclude that a right of supremacy over the other patriarchates was granted to the Ecumenical Patriarchate? For these reasons, although certainly despite himself and following his incurable blindness, Meletios contributed more than anyone else, by his activity in Asia Minor, to the victory of the Turks. Thus Saint John Chrysostom went so far as to depose and ordain even the exarches in the provinces of Asia Minor and Anatolius, together with the permanent synod around him, deposed and installed bishops even in the Metropolis of Tyre, which was under Antioch. The speed with which the foolish and mean-spirited chauvinism of the Patriarchate and the grandees of the nation was manifested, completely unnecessarily, their hatred and scorn towards Turkey had reached the point that when it came time to elect a patriarch of Constantinople, they elected him on the basis of statutes that were completely different from those that were recognized for the election of the patriarch, statutes that the Turkish government had neither seen nor approved, and they did not announce the election, even as a courtesy, to the government in order to have it recognize it. It was in this context — in the aftermath of the Greco-Turkish War and the reign of Meletios, when the Greek community was still deeply divided between Royalists and Venizelists — that the future Patriarch Christophoros wrote his article. As an historical document, it is amazing in many respects. They expected to see their Greek fellow-citizens share in their misfortune. … Would it not be completely unreasonable to claim a papal primacy in the Church and inconsiderately disdain every opinion coming from the three eastern patriarchates? Asia Minor, starting with Smyrna, had only just been occupied by the Greeks when the bishops and main figures of the place started to agitate the Greek element against the Turkish element with inopportune protests. Like, some musical group is coming to your country that you don't like. The jurisdiction of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, including Pontus, Asia, and Thrace, is in green. A historical event has taken place here, which we’ve been waiting for many long years. The Christianization of Kievan Rus', widely seen as the birth of the ROC, is believed to have occurred in 988 through the baptism of the Kievan prince Vladimir and his people by the clergy of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, whose constituent part the ROC remained for the next six centuries, while the Kievan see remained in the jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarchate until 1686. Just a year after this article was published, Meletios was elected Patriarch of Alexandria — beating out, among others, Christophoros himself. The other question where the papal tendencies of the Ecumenical Patriarchate have been manifest in an obvious way has been, as we have said, that of the convocation of an ecumenical council or a great local council. 20, pp. [1] The Ecumenical Patriarchate, according to the canons, has no right over “Orthodox colonies that are dispersed and located outside the boundaries of the sister autocephalous Orthodox churches,” contrary to what was formulated in a recent letter by the Ecumenical Patriarch to the Patriarch of Alexandria. It is not stated anywhere that he has such a right," the patriarch said at the eighth "Faith and Word" international festival of orthodox media. But if, God forbid, it happens that Turkey exists in the future, what will be the situation of the Greek element with the Turks, after so many provocations on your part?”. Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email. 5-34) took care to gather numerous examples of interventions by the Ecumenical Patriarchate in the territories of other patriarchates. The reason for these studies of this question is the tendency that the Ecumenical Patriarchate has had over the past two years to desire to extend its spiritual jurisdiction over every ecclesiastical territory or every community which, for one reason or another, was or appeared to be deprived of regular spiritual government and oversight, which one describes as “Churches of the Diaspora.” Other tendencies of the Ecumenical Patriarchate aiming at general domination in the Church have also given us occasion to research this issue in detail. During this occupation, the city was administered by the allies and the Turkish government found itself under their direct control. The ROC also sees the Ecumenical Patriarch in a strictly limited way, saying Bartholomew can act on behalf of other Orthodox churches only if they make a formal request. The Ecumenical Patriarchate suddenly lost virtually its entire flock. It thus suffered all the consequences of its defeat, among them to see the state’s capital, Constantinople, occupied by the allied armies. In general, everywhere and always, every time that the Ecumenical Patriarch entered into relations with one of the other patriarchs or with all of them at once, the relations were cordial, full of esteem, mutual respect and fraternal solidarity. After the Greek and Alexandrian Orthodox Churches followed suit later, Kirill did the same to them. Gundyaev (Patriarch Kirill) was appointed in 1992-1994. 20, pp. 3, p. 199). And, if there arose a transgression either against dogma, against the holy canons, or against ecclesiastical discipline, all the patriarchs intervened together. On 15 October, the Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) decided to sever relations and eucharistic communion with the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople (PC). In this history of the Eastern Orthodox Church, after the schism, the Ecumenical Patriarch appears first in dignity, the Pope of Rome set aside, and he is without a doubt in the first rank everywhere; he has prosperity, wealth, glory; he counts on his territory six hundred bishops in the time of Photios, and later perhaps even more, since, after the pretense of the emperors, the civil provinces of the Greek Empire of the East, which depended from an ecclesiastical point of view on the Church of the West, were all placed under the spiritual authority of the Ecumenical Patriarch. Of the two main poles of authority in the Orthodox world, the Ecumenical Patriarchate is regarded as the more Western-oriented. The ROC had announced previously it would break communion with any hierarch of the Church of Greece who enters in communion with any hierarch of the OCU. 4626 ignores rights of military believers of this Church, New Director of Institute of Religion and Society of the Ukrainian Catholic University Interviewed, Russian propaganda seeks to destroy U.S.-Ukraine cooperation, distorts facts about Ukrainian Orthodoxy, The RISU editorial board invites its readers to become co-creators of the new portal, The RISU editorial office is a non-profit organization that exists owing to grants and donations. The preaching given from the pulpit of all the churches of the Ecumenical Patriarchate was no longer concerned with the truths of the Gospel, but only with the triumph of the party that had had Meletios named patriarch and the continual cultivation of the fanaticism that the Greek population of Turkey harbored against the opposing party and against the Turks. The ecumenical patriarch has a unique role among Orthodox bishops, though it is not without its controversy. With time, in order to legitimize the most reasonable interventions, it was deemed natural and just that, just as the Churches of Rome, Alexandria Antioch and Jerusalem, to whose rank Constantinople had been raised, had large ecclesiastical jurisdictions, so too were comparable territories granted to the bishop of Constantinople, since, moreover, albeit without canonical recognition, he already intervened, as bishop of the capital, in the affairs of the Eastern bishops; no opposition to this concession appeared. The two churches are in a row over the future of Ukraine’s Church and its affiliations. "The Patriarch of Constantinople has appropriated the right to convene an Ecumenical Council on his own accord, without relying on any church rules. Such an action may very well become an important piece in the process of healing and stability in … He gave interviews in which he accused Turkey of being a barbarous, bloody and worn-out nation. We are not funded by any of the Churches or religious organizations, nor do we represent the interests of any. It is purely fraternal. The Ecumenical Patriarchate and only the Church of Greece adopted the new calendar definitively in their territories. The brother patriarchs, equal in honor, attempted, with repeated telegrams, to recommend suspending any decision, but they had no effect. Moskóvskiy patriarkhát), is one of the autocephalous Eastern Orthodox Christian churches. It had a Cretan guard come from Greece for the Patriarchate. 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