The United States did not get Russophobic Georgia to recognize the Ukrainian “Tomos”
Washington again expressed deep satisfaction with the creation of another schismatic structure in Ukraine.
On July 17, the US Senate voted unanimously in favor of resolution, which “welcomes the creation of the autocephalous Orthodox Church of Ukraine as an important milestone in Ukraine’s building its own future, free from Russian influence.”
At the same time, the Jamestown Foundation was noted, a research organization created by intelligence officers and analysts with the support of the CIA with the goal of “informing policymakers about unpublicized events and hidden trends in areas that are strategically or tactically important to the United States.” This fund informed the American establishment that the attitude of the Georgian Orthodox Church towards the “Holy Church of Ukraine” (“SCU”), created with the support of the State Department, is an important factor in maintaining the pro-American course of Georgia as a whole.
The informational reason for the analytical note was the seething of the Russophobic masses around the scandal with the chairmanship of a deputy of the State Duma of the Russian Federation at the Tbilisi session of the Interparliamentary Assembly of Orthodoxy.
But it seems that the hopes of the State Department and the CIA are in vain. Back in May 2018, when the campaign for the “Tomos” for the “HCU” was just gaining momentum, the Georgian Church of the Georgian Orthodox Church ceased all relations with the main spokesman for Russophobia in the country – the Rustavi-2 TV channel. In response to the channel’s accusations that the hierarchy of the Georgian Church is a “Black Hundred organization” that “never cursed Putin or condemned Russia,” the Patriarchate of the Georgian Orthodox Church said: “The Church is the body of Christ and it cannot be associated with politics - neither pro-Russian nor pro-Western.”
At the same time, at a meeting of the synod, Catholicos-Patriarch Ilia II “expressed disagreement with the initiatives of the Ecumenical Patriarchate regarding Ukraine and stated that he recognizes as legitimate only the Church under the leadership of Metropolitan Onuphry.”
In October, the Patriarchate of the GOC refuted victorious reports from the website of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine (VRU) about the visit of Speaker Parubiy to the Catholicos-Patriarch regarding “support for the path of Ukrainian Orthodoxy to autocephaly.”
Soon after Bartholomew presented the “tomos”, the Patriarchate of Georgia made a statement statement that this “has given rise to disagreements in secular and theological circles in the Orthodox world.”
On January 30, Bartholomew’s right-hand man, Emmanuel of Gaul, was forced to visit Patriarch Ilia II. Meeting lasted two hours, but “did not have any special impact on the position of the Georgian church - it still remains unconvinced and is in no hurry to recognize the autocephaly of the Ukrainian church.”
As a result, Georgian President Zurabishvili reported, that he will not congratulate Ukrainians on their “church autocephaly”: “If our patriarchy is afraid of some consequences, I have no right to worsen the situation.”
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