TO BE OR NOT TO BE FOR A UNITED CHURCH

During the visit of the President of Ukraine to Turkey Leonid Kuchma and the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew met in Istanbul. Secular and clerical leaders have discussed the situation in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church created during the last ten years as well as the possible ways of overcoming the internal Orthodox conflict. This was announced immediately after the talk in Istanbul by the Head of the State Committee on Religions Viktor Bondarenko (information of ITAR-TASS/RADONEZH). The talk was also about the return of canonical status to the Kyiv patriarchate for which purpose they say it is planned to create a commission with the participation of Constantinople and Moscow.

At the meeting with the President of Ukraine the Constantinople Patriarch has once again confirmed that the unification of the Ukrainian Orthodox church into one Local Church is to become the affair of all the spiritual centers of the World Orthodox community, and especially of the Moscow and Constantinople patriarchates. It is difficult to consider these the last words on cooperation between Constantinople and Moscow as the reassuring forecast as to the solution of the problems of Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Because the relations between the two patriarchates have radically aggravated after the recent visit of patriarch Bartholomew to Estonia. As we know, Patriarch Bartholomew claimed then that he considers the whole of Estonia as the canonical territory of Constantinople patriarchy, which, in fact, means the return of Estonian church to the status that existed before the occupation of Estonia under to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.

The Moscow Patriarchate considers (to which testify both media of the Russian Orthodox Church and the special definition of the Synod) that Patriarch Bartholomew “actually announced war on the Russian church by his unprecedented anti-canonical step” and that his “Estonian demarche” is only a rehearsal before interfering in Ukrainian affairs where he is going to recognize the heretical Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church and Ukrainian Orthodox Church Kyiv Patriarchate, for which, in the opinion of certain Russian media, “neither Kuchma nor Istanbul Patriarch (note the offensive titling of Patriarch Bartholomew — Auth.) have a single right.” The only way that Moscow can suggest to the “Ukrainian schismatics,” is to regret their sin of splitting and humbly return to the womb of Moscow, the mother church.

I hope that they will wait for this for a long time, a very long time. In particular, because, as was said by the abbot of the Saint Mikhail Monastery Bishop Dymytry, “in Istanbul the President of Ukraine have once again confirmed his loyalty to the idea of unifying the Orthodox Church in this country.”