Layouts from Filaret: “The Russian Church will not last long”
The head of the self-proclaimed UOC-KP Filaret believes that if the Ukrainian Church is granted a tomos of autocephaly from Constantinople, church Moscow will not be able to do anything, and the Russian Orthodox Church “will find itself isolated.”
He expressed this opinion in an interview with the editor-in-chief of “Echo of Moscow” Alexei Venediktov, answering his question about the possible consequences of such a division in Orthodoxy.
“After all, there are many Orthodox churches. Will this not cause division (I don’t want to say the word “schism” that you spoke), division into supporters and opponents: we recognize such Patriarchies, such churches, we do not recognize such. Some kind of turmoil...” said Venediktov.
According to Filaret, his organization already has a “full plan” and knows which Churches will support the Russian Orthodox Church and which will not.
“We foresee that the Moscow Patriarch, firstly, himself does not recognize this Tomos of autocephaly of the Ukrainian Church. But not only does he not recognize it himself, but he will try to agitate so that other churches do not recognize it either. But we know approximately who can support the Moscow Patriarch. But there will be few of them,” he said.
“What do you mean a little? “In total, how many patriarchs do we have?” Venediktov clarified.
To which Filaret replied that in world Orthodoxy, according to his calculations, there are only two patriarchs who are ready to take the side of Moscow.
“2. No more than 2,” he said confidently.
Venediktov did not agree with Filaret’s arithmetic.
“Well, Serbia, Georgia, Antioch, Greece, Moscow - 5,” he said.
Filaret continued to stand his ground.
“No, 2 churches. Antioch, because it depends on Moscow financially, politically, and so on. Serbian - yes. I don’t know, Bulgarian maybe. After Patriarch Kirill’s trip to Bulgaria, I don’t know what the mood is there towards the Russian Church. Georgian... But Gruzinskaya only on the grounds that she did not go to the Pan-Orthodox Council in Crete. One can assume that, in general, Georgia supports Ukraine, and therefore the church should too. Therefore, it turns out: the Russian Church, the Antiochian, the Serbian - 3. And together with the Ukrainian Church there will already be 16. This means that 13 support the Ecumenical Patriarch, and 3...
And if we take the entirety of the Orthodox Church, then Moscow is now the largest church. And when the Ukrainian Church becomes autocephalous, the Russian Church will be reduced by almost half. This means that Ecumenical Orthodoxy now exists without the Ukrainian Church and will already exist without the Russian Church. But the Russian Church will not survive for long,” Filaret is sure.
In his opinion, the reason for the defeat of the Russian Orthodox Church will be that it will be “isolated.”
“Because she will be isolated from all Orthodoxy. Both the bishops themselves and the believers will protest against this. Remember the cessation of prayer communication due to the Estonian Church. They stopped it, and then six months later they were forced to restore it. The same will happen in relation to the Ukrainian Church,” Filaret is convinced.
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