“Even the union churches failed Patriarch Kirill”
At the forum of Orthodox churches convened in Amman, where the situation in Ukraine will be discussed, only three of the 14 invited first hierarchs will be present.
Nezavisimaya Gazeta writes about this, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“A meeting of representatives of Orthodox churches will be held in the capital of Jordan on February 25–26. It was initiated in November 2019 by the Patriarch of Jerusalem Theophilos III. But of the 14 invited first hierarchs, only three will be in Amman: the Jerusalem, Moscow and Serbian patriarchs. Even the closest allies of the Russian Orthodox Church in the church world greatly let down the Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus' Kirill,” the publication notes.
It is indicated that the Patriarchate of Constantinople, Alexandria, Hellas, Georgian, Bulgarian, Cyprus, Albania, as well as unexpectedly Antioch, refrained from participating in any form, although on December 30 its Patriarch John X declared his readiness to help strengthen Orthodox unity and was going to come to Jordan.
“The Syrian synods justified their refusal by “the desire to avoid deepening disagreements between the brothers.” With exactly the same wording, the Georgian, Albanian, and Bulgarian churches also refused to travel to Amman. The arrival of the head of the Church of the Czech Lands and Slovakia remains in doubt. Its Synod approved its participation at the end of December 2019, but the composition of the delegation has not yet been announced. The primates of the Polish and Romanian Orthodox churches will not go to Jordan themselves, but will send their representatives,” the newspaper writes.
At the same time, the Moscow Patriarchate claims that “the meeting in Amman will be one of the stages in preventing a schism” that arose due to the fact that the Patriarchate of Constantinople at the end of 2018 created the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU), which was recognized in 2019 by the Alexandria and The Greek Church, because of which the Russian Orthodox Church interrupted Eucharistic communion - with the Ecumenical Patriarchate in full, with Alexandria and Hellas partially - and began to actively convince other churches not to recognize the OCU.
“However, most Orthodox churches do not have a clear position on this matter. Some of them recognized the right of Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople to grant autocephaly, and some (and such a minority) are confident that the Church of Constantinople should not have created the OCU, since this violated church solidarity. It is noteworthy that those who said the latter still decided not to go to Amman,” the publication notes.
NG also writes about the ambiguous wording that the Jerusalem Patriarchate adopted at a meeting of the Synod on February 21: “A decision was made to convene a fraternal meeting of Orthodox churches in Jordan with the aim of developing dialogue and reconciliation in the name of the unity of the Church with respect for the privileges of the Ecumenical Patriarchate.”
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