Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Kirill blasted on Wednesday the so-called unification council in Kiev claiming that the event legalized schism and brought together dissidents.
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 27th December, 2018) Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Kirill blasted on Wednesday the so-called unification council in Kiev claiming that the event legalized schism and brought together dissidents."Complete failure of the so-called unifying council, no unification occurred, it was the dissidents who got united, their illegal, non-canonical legalization by Patriarch [Bartholomew], whose jurisdiction could not and did not extend to the Ukrainian land," the patriarch said at a meeting of the Supreme Council of the Russian Orthodox Church.
The situation in Ukraine is a "civilized catastrophe" as it is a never-before-seen open intervention into the church affairs, the patriarch noted.
"There is a major mission from the outside, regarding the destruction of the Orthodox Church in Ukraine ... The fact that the world is silent today proves it. Well, we have to draw conclusions from all the tales that have been fed to us over the course of many years - about the rule of law, about human rights, about religious freedom - about everything that until recently was considered the fundamental values for the formation of a modern state and human relations in modern society," Kirill added.
Such actions by Kiev and Washington aim to break off spiritual ties between the Russians and Ukrainians, according to the patriarch.
"This means that fundamental rights can be violated, laws can be violated if this results in an achievement of a particular political goal, and it is very well-formulated, including by the US plenipotentiaries who work in Ukraine, and by the representatives of the Ukrainian government themselves: you need to break the last link uniting our people, and this connection is a spiritual one," Patriarch Kirill underlined.
On December 15, during a "unification council" that was held in Kiev, Epiphany Dumenko, metropolitan of Pereyaslavsky and Bila Tserkva of the non-canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Kyiv Patriarchate (UOC-KP), was elected head of the new church. The UOC-MP refused to officially participate in this event. The authorities of Ukraine expect to get tomos of autocephaly from Constantinople in early January.
The Moscow Patriarchate has described the situation as the "legalization of schism," stressing that it would have catastrophic consequences and affect millions of Christians in Ukraine and other countries.
