The synod of Ukraine's non-canonical Orthodox Church of the Kiev Patriarchate on Saturday added two monasteries, the property of the canonical Church linked to the Moscow Patriarchate, to the title of its top priest.
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 20th October, 2018) The synod of Ukraine's non-canonical Orthodox Church of the Kiev Patriarchate on Saturday added two monasteries, the property of the canonical Church linked to the Moscow Patriarchate, to the title of its top priest.
"The synod has changed the rules of addressing the Kiev Patriarch," the Church's spokesman, Archbishop Yevstratiy Zorya, said on Facebook.
The title now reads as "His Holiness, His Beatitude, the Archbishop and Metropolitan of Kiev - mother of all Russian cities - of Galicia, the Patriarch of All Russia-Ukraine, the Holy Archimandrite of Kiev Pechersk and Pochayiv Lavras."
The Kiev Pechersk Lavra, an 11th-century cave monastery, and Pochayiv Lavra, the biggest monastic complex in western Ukraine, belong to the Ukrainian Canonical Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate. The Kiev monastery is the Church's Holy See.
The move comes after the Constantinople Ecumenical Patriarch granted independence to the non-canonical Church at a synod meeting earlier in October. The Russian Orthodox Church on Monday broke off ties with the Istanbul-based Patriarchate after slamming its decision as a "schism."
