Perplexity in Moscow over Constantinople’s Canonical Claims to Ukraine

During his meeting with Ukrainian President Victor Yuschenko on March 26, Archbishop Vsevolod (Maidansky) of Skopelos, Cicago-based representative of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the USA (Patriarchate of Constantinople), declared Constantinople’s canonical claims to Ukraine. His statement was distributed by the Religious Information Service of Ukraine and then published at the official website of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the USA. This statement has provoked serious perplexity in the Russian Orthodox Church.

 

The statement reads, ‘The position of the Mother Church, the Patriarchate of Constantinople, is that her daughter – the Moscow Patriarchate – consists of that territory which it encompassed to the year 1686. The subjugation of the Kyivan Metropolia to the Moscow Patriarchate was concluded by Patriarch Dionysios without the agreement or ratification of the Holy and Sacred Synod of the Great Church of Christ’.

 

Commenting the mass media reports, Archpriest Nikolay Balashov, the Moscow Patriarchate Department for External Church Relations Secretary for Inter-Orthodox Relations, noted in his interview to Tserkovny vestnik that on the face of it the text raised serious doubts if the Ukrainian journalists conveyed Archbishop Vsevolod’s statement correctly.

 

‘Archbishop Vsevolod of Skopelos participated in the negotiations on the Ukrainian problems on several occasions and never challenged the validity and canonicity of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which is a self-governed part of the Moscow Patriarchate’, Father Nikolay stressed.

 

‘I also know that during his visit to Ukraine Archbishop Vsevolod considered it his primary duty to pay a visit to His Beatitude Metropolitan Vladimir of Kiev and All Ukraine. However, the fact of the official publication by the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the USA leaves no room for doubt. Besides, we have learnt from the press release issued in the USA that Archbishop Vsevolod had official meetings with the former Metropolitan Philaret of Kiev, who was excommunicated from the Orthodox Church, and with a representative of the so-called ‘Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church’. Moreover, the Primate of the canonical and universally recognized Ukrainian Orthodox Church was ranked on a par with a member of an uncanonical schismatic group and an anathemized person. It appears to mean that for Archbishop Vsevolod there is no substantial difference between them. There is an impression that His Eminence is now guided by a new approach, rather then the conception that was worked out by previous consultations between the Patriarchates of Constantinople and Moscow concerning a settlement of the Ukrainian church problem. I do not know how it is possible to combine this new approach with the statement Archbishop Vsevolod made during his meeting with Metropolitan Vladimir that the Patriarchate of Constantinople stands invariably for settling the problem of schism on the basis of church canons’.

 

Speaking about the published statement by Archbishop Vsevolod, Father Nikolay pointed out that similar statements were already voiced in the past and represented nothing new or peculiar. ‘Ukrainian schismatics, in their attempts to sow discord between the Patriarchates of Constantinople and Moscow, alleged also before that the Orthodox Church of Constantinople considers Ukraine to be its canonical territory. To put an end to the misunderstandings the Holy Synod of the Patriarchate of Constantinople issued on August 8, 2000, an official statement describing these allegations as ‘completely erroneous’ and the publications reproducing them as ‘based on incorrect information’. At that time the Patriarchate of Constantinople expressed regret that the attempts to spread such rumors ‘not only cause division but also conflict between Christians and they misrepresent and distort the virtuous intentions of those who have sacrificed and labored for the restoration of the unity of Christians’ ‘.

 

Archpriest Nikolay Balashov reminded the readers that Patriarch Bartholomaios of Constantinople, during his visit to the Russian Orthodox Church in 1993, stated officially that ‘the Ecumenical Patriarchate recognizes only one canonical Metropolitan of Kiev – His Eminence Vladimir, Metropolitan of Kiev and All Ukraine’. ‘That is why’, emphasized Father Nikolay, ‘it is so difficult for us to believe that the statement Archbishop Vsevolod made in Kiev really reflects the official position of the Patriarchate of Constantinople’, adding that an appropriate inquiry has already been sent to the Patriarchate of Constantinople.

 

‘From the historical point of view’, said the DECR Secretary, ‘the published statement causes no less amazement. The Decree of His Holiness Patriarch Dionysios of Constantinople was signed by all the Holy Synod members including the Metropolitans of Chalcedon, Nikodemia, Lycia, Thessaloniki and others – altogether 20 hierarchs. Besides, this decision was approved by His Holiness Patriarch Dositheos of Jerusalem, who also issued a confirming decree. Moreover, in his special official letter to the bishops and all the Orthodox living in Poland, Patriarch Dositheos told them to obey the Moscow-appointed Metropolitan Gedeon of Kiev, ‘who is accepted and recognized by all the patriarchs as a true and authentic metropolitan’.

 

The documents confirming this are kept with care at the Russian State Archives of Ancient Acts and well known to the scholarly community from studies by famous Russian historian N. F. Kapterev published in the late 19th  – early 20th century. These facts have never been challenged by other researchers, even those with no special liking for Moscow. For instance, Prof. I. I. Ogiyenko, a well-known Ukrainian historian (later the head of the unrecognized ‘Autocephalous Ukrainian Church in Canada’), in his study ‘Ukrainska Tserkva: Narisi z istorii Ukrainskoi Pravoslavnoi Tserkvi’, confirms that the envoys from Moscow and Kiev came back home with ‘all the necessary acts signed by the whole council’.

 

Archpriest Nikolay Balashov said on conclusion, ‘It is not clear what purpose is pursued by this attempt to rewrite the historical documents which have not been challenged by anybody for three centuries and which are recognized by all the Local Orthodox Churches. Is it to cast a shadow on the previous Primates of the Churches of Constantinople and Jerusalem and their sacred thrones so that the traditional respect that the Slavic faithful have for them may be belittled?’

 

 

See also:

• Religious situation in Ukraine