Toward the end of last week a delegation of the Patriarchate of Constantinople met with President Viktor Yushchenko. During the meeting the leader of the delegation, Archbishop Vsevolod Skopelsky (Maidansky), made a very important statement. It reads as follows (courtesy of RISU): “The Patriarchate of Constantinople, as the Mother Church, believes that the Moscow Patriarchate, as its Daughter, has the canonical territory that existed in this church until 1686 (i.e., when the Kyivan Church became part of Moscow’s church — Auth.). The Kyivan See was subordinated to the Church of Moscow by (Ecumenical) Patriarch Dionysus without the consent and approval of the Holy and Sacred Synod of the Great Church of Christ.” (Historical records show that after Dionysus’s death, subsequent Ecumenical Patriarchs long refused to recognize Moscow’s right to the Kyivan metropolitanate — Auth.)
During the reception for the delegation of the Holy Synod of the Patriarch of Constantinople, President Yushchenko stressed that he and his team believe that the secular authorities should not interfere in church affairs: “We stand for the equality of all churches.” Earlier, addressing the constituent assembly of the Party “People’s Union ‘Our Ukraine,’” Mr. Yushchenko said he was certain that a single Orthodox Church would be established in Ukraine.
The Moscow Patriarchate promptly commented on the meeting between the delegation from Constantinople and the President of Ukraine. Spokesman Bishop Nikolai Balashov declared that “journalists’ announcements about Archbishop Vsevolod Skopelsky’s statement raise doubts. I have met with Archbishop Vsevolod on more than one occasion during discussions of the Ukrainian problem and he has never denied the legitimacy and canonical validity of the Orthodox Church (i.e., UOC MP), which is a self-governing part of the Moscow Patriarchate. Now that he is in Ukraine, Archbishop Vsevolod, of course, thought it his first duty to pay a visit to Metropolitan Volodymyr of Kyiv.”
Bishop Nikolai recalled that similar statements have been made in the past. Thus, in 2000, the excommunicated former Metropolitan of Kyiv stated that the Orthodox Church of Constantinople allegedly regarded Ukraine as its canonical territory, referring to that same “joining” of the Kyivan metropolitanate to the Moscow Patriarchate in 1686. This “disinformation” was, however, officially refuted by the Patriarchate of Constantinople on August 2, 2000. Bishop Balashov recalled further that during Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew’s visit to the Russian Orthodox Church he declared that he recognized Metropolitan Volodymyr of Kyiv as the only canonical one. “For centuries the legitimate and canonical nature of the jurisdiction of the Moscow Patriarchate in Ukraine has never been called into question; it is recognized by all Orthodox churches,” Bishop Nikolai said, adding in conclusion that the Russian Orthodox Church has “considerable doubts” that the statement quoted by journalists “reflects the official stand of the Patriarch of Constantinople.” He declined comment on the statement as such.
The statement made by the delegation of the Ecumenical Patriarch was received with approval by many members of the Ukrainian Orthodox community (at an eparchial assembly the Lviv eparchy of the UAOC resolved to commence proceedings to institute a Ukrainian Local Church under the auspices of the Ecumenical Patriarch). The hierarchy of the Kyiv Patriarchate is also optimistic. Today, as never before, two powerful factors, the President of Ukraine and the Ecumenical Patriarch, appear to be acting in unison. Hopefully they are.
Nevertheless, it is difficult even to imagine the arsenal of measures that the Moscow Patriarchate will employ once it feels that the Ukrainian Church is really drifting away and slipping out of its hands. There will be a mighty resistance and a flood of refutations, threats, church and secular diplomacy, inexhaustible finances, and pressure brought against both the ecumenical Orthodox churches and the Ukrainian and Turkish governments — and many other things that will serve to remind Ukrainians of those totally unchurchlike methods that were adopted in 1686 in order to subordinate the Kyiv metropolitanate to Moscow. But as King Henri IV of France once said, “Paris vault bien une messe.” (Paris is well worth a mass).
P.S. At press time we received an announcement about Moscow Patriarch Alexis II’s reaction to the declaration of the Ecumenical Patriarch’s envoys. He said, “References to the Patriarch of Constantinople that may bring about another schism in the church life of Ukraine will not stabilize but aggravate the situation that has developed in the Ukrainian Orthodox community. The UOC MP is the only church entitled to rally to itself all the branches of Ukrainian Orthodoxy that today are in a state of schism.”
