A shocking event has now taken place: the Patriarch of Moscow has “blessed” the attack, offering a “theological”, and in any case ecclesiastical, legitimacy to a war of aggression.
Long before his 24 February invasion of Ukraine, Vladimir Putin’s in his two decades in power made enormous headway in his bid to expand Russian influence in Greece.
The Moscow Patriarchate and the Kremlin have unleashed incessant personal attacks against Vartholomeos and the Ecumenical Patriarchate over his decision to grant, in January, 2019, the Orthodox Church of Ukraine autocephaly,
The meetings with the US President and top American officials come at a time that US-Turkish relations are at rock bottom and in a period when the Ecumenical Patriarchate has been besieged by the attacks on all levels by the Patriarchate of Moscow and the Kremlin.
The meetings with the US President and top American officials come at a time that US-Turkish relations are at rock bottom and in a period when the Ecumenical Patriarchate has been besieged by the attacks on all levels of the Patriarchate of Moscow and by the Kremlin.
That canonical role of the Ecumenical Patriarchate as the coordinating centre in relations between the sister Orthodox Churches is now being challenged openly by Moscow.
“Whether our Russian brethren like it or not, sooner or later they will follow the solution given by the Ecumenical Patriarchate, because they have no other choice,” Vartholomeos declared.
The Moscow Patriarchate in a statement called upon the leaders of all the local Eastern Orthodox Churches to take a stand on what it views as Constantinople’s “uncanonical decisions”.
The Russian Church in a statement said that until the Church of Constantinople “annuls the illegal decisions it took, there can be no joint services with [Ecumenical Patriarchate] clergy”.
