Statement of Moscow Patriarchate’s Department for External Church Relations Communication Service on alleged talks with Denisenko

In connection with enquiries coming from some journalists over alleged meetings and talks that the head of the Moscow Patriarchate Department for External Church Relations, Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad, or other DECR officials had with excommunicated M. Denisenko (former Metropolitan Philaret), head of the self-styled ‘Kievan Patriarchate’, the DECR Communication Service is authorized to state that such meetings and talks did not take place in fact. Moreover, it is canonically impossible to hold them with M. Denisenko as ‘patriarch of Kiev and All Rus’-Ukraine’ – the point that has been repeatedly made in the documents of the Church Supreme Authority.