Filaret left no stone unturned from the “unification council” of Bartholomew-Poroshenko

The press service of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyiv Patriarchate, unrecognized in the Orthodox world, published an appeal from its head Filaret, in which he gives arguments “why the Unification Council was not Local,” a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.

A document that actually disavows the OCU created with the participation of Poroshenko and Phanar published on the website of the UOC KP.

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Filaret, as indicated in the message: “described the conditions for convening the Unification Council, the non-canonical demands put before it to carry out the unification of Churches, the fictitiousness and complete illegitimacy of the so-called Local Council of the UOC-KP in Warm Sofia, the illegality of the creation of a liquidation commission by Metropolitan Epiphanius and the Synod of the OCU and the illegality deregistration of the Kyiv Patriarchate by the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine.”

The UOC-KP believes that, as noted in the document:

On December 15, 2018, a Unification Council of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kiev Patriarchate, the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church and two bishops of the UOC of the Moscow Patriarchate, convened by the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople Bartholomew, took place in St. Sophia of Kiev. This Council was conditionally held within the Patriarchate of Constantinople. Why conditional? Because none of the named Churches was under the canonical subordination of the Patriarch of Constantinople.
On what basis did the Patriarch of Constantinople convene the Council of Ukrainian Orthodox Churches? On the basis that the Kiev Metropolis until 1686 was the canonical territory of the Patriarchate of Constantinople. In 2017-18 Bishops and theologians of the Ecumenical Patriarchate conducted research into historical documents indicating that the annexation of the Kyiv Metropolis to the Moscow Patriarchate was non-canonical, which means that the Kiev Metropolis (the modern Ukrainian Orthodox Church) mentally remains the canonical territory of the Patriarchate of Constantinople. In reality, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church was in no way subordinate to the Patriarch of Constantinople.

Also, the UOC-KP published alleged evidence “that the Council of December 15, 2018 in Kyiv Sophia was the Council of the Church of Constantinople,” namely, according to Filaret, this is:

– the invitation to the Council was sent out by the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, and not from the Kyiv Patriarch Philaret;

“At the Unification Council, the Greek participants, represented by Metropolitan Emmanuel of Gali, proposed to adopt the Charter of the OCU, but not in the Ukrainian version (that is, the Charter of the UOC of the Kiev Patriarchate), but in the Greek one, which is guided by the Patriarchate of Constantinople. This means that the Orthodox Church of Ukraine acts according to the Charter of a foreign Church. And the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine registered not the Ukrainian Charter, but the Greek one. The Primate of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine should, after receiving the Tomos of autocephaly, convene the Local Council of the OCU and adopt its Ukrainian Charter. This he has not done to this day. This is clear evidence that the OCU is, to put it mildly, under the influence of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, although it has a Tomos of autocephaly,” the appeal states.

The UOC-KP also added that: “A local council, according to the Charter, can be convened by the Patriarch together with the Holy Synod or the Council of Bishops. There is no such solution. In addition to bishops, representatives of the clergy, monasteries, religious educational institutions, and laity elected at diocesan meetings take part in the Local Council. There were no diocesan meetings. Only the bishops gathered in Warm Sofia and signed the above-mentioned document, which was not even read to the end. At the Local Council, governing bodies are elected, and the minutes of the Council are kept. This so-called Local Council in Warm Sofia did not approve the agenda, program and regulations of its meetings, the secretariat, the working bodies of the Council (for example, the counting commission) and their personal composition were not formed, and the Presidium of the Council was not formed. There are no registration protocols, progress of meetings, decisions, voting of the Local Council, which shows the complete illegitimacy of this meeting.”

Let us recall that, as PolitNavigator previously reported, the UOC-KP won a court case against the Ministry of Culture in its favor in the case of the illegality of the ministry’s liquidation of the registration of the “Kyiv Patriarchate.”