MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 15th September, 2018) The feud between the orthodox patriarchates of Moscow and Constantinople has been ongoing for 100 years, Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, chairman of the Department for External Church Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate, said on Friday.
The Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church decided earlier in the day that Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia will cease commemoration of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople, but full communion between the churches will not be suspended yet. The move is a response to the Constantinople Patriarchate appointing its exarchs to Ukraine as "part of preparation to grant autocephaly to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church."
"The war of the Patriarchate of Constantinople against the Moscow one continues for almost a hundred years ... Today history repeats itself. Again, as in the time of Patriarch Tikhon, they send their exarchs to us, supposedly to heal the split, but in fact to legitimize it, with a view for the subsequent split of the Ukrainian Church from the Moscow Patriarchate. The same logic is traced: the use of a difficult situation not for the brotherly support, but for weakening the Russian Church by detaching certain parts from it," Metropolitan Hilarion wrote on Facebook.
Apart from the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate (UOC-MP) recognized by the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, there are also other orthodox churches operating in the country. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko is trying to achieve recognition of non-canonical institutions and to create a single local autocephalous church based on them in Ukraine.
In April, Poroshenko said that Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople was launching the procedures required to establish the Autocephalous Church in Ukraine. The Russian Orthodox Church condemned the move, saying that the anti-canonical measures in Ukraine threatened to split the Orthodoxy.
