The granting of autocephaly to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew is “a secular event,” Chancellor of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Ukrainian Orthodox Church Metropolitan Antoniy (Pakanych) said.

“I would like to emphasize that the Christian holiday should not be outshined by a certain secular event. There were a lot of such events in our history. So, those events, which were believed to be great some time ago, then became shameful both for the church history and for those people, who signed that sort of documents,” he said at a press briefing in Kyiv on Sunday.

The documents that have been earlier signed caused some problems to the Christians, the metropolitan said.

“Various documents were signed, both unions and tomos, but all of this unfortunately very often caused some difficulties in the life to the Christians, and only those people, who deal with the church history, are aware of them now,” he said.

On October 11, 2018, the Constantinople Patriarchate’s Synod in Istanbul invalidated its decree of 1686 on the transfer of the Kyiv Metropolinate to Moscow, declared the creation of a metochion in Kyiv, and rehabilitated the leaders of the self-proclaimed Orthodox Churches in Ukraine. In response, the Synod of the Moscow Patriarchate declared the full severance of relations with Constantinople.

On January 5, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew signed a tomos granting autocephaly to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine at the St. George’s Cathedral in Istanbul.</s>The Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, who reigns in Constantinople, has a magnificent title which corresponds to almost nothing on earth. Although he represents an unbroken tradition of almost 2,000 years of Christianity, Constantinople has been the Muslim city of Istanbul since 1453 and there are now fewer than 3,000 Orthodox Christians living there. Although his title is a claim to universal authority in the church, this has been has been obviously false since the papacy broke away and took with it western Christianity in the 11th century. Adding insult to injury, the patriarchs of Moscow regard themselves as his successors in “the Third Rome”. Yet still he matters. His decision last year to recognise the Ukrainian Orthodox church as a body separate from Moscow was celebrated in his cathedral in Istanbul today. It came in the teeth of Russian opposition, and the political rift between Ukraine and Russia is now paralleled by a rift on the spiritual plane between Moscow and Constantinople and the declaration of a formal schism.

This may all seem like shadow play. But religions matter. It is obvious that they reflect political and even economic tensions. But they also help shape and form them. Religious allegiance has been a very important part of how nations imagine themselves into being, and so of how they define who is and is not a member. This may not be obvious in England, where the near collapse of the state church has run in parallel with a more general crisis of legitimacy. But in countries such as Poland and Ireland, religion and nationalism were inseparable for most of the 20th century. Even some forms of secularism can serve the same function of crystallising the idea of a nation, as the doctrine of laïcité does in France, or the separation of church and state does in the US. In all these cases, there is an underlying idea that only those people who share in a particular doctrine can truly be part of the nation. And in Ukraine, where President Petro Poroshenko is campaigning for re-election using the slogan “army, language, faith”, the connection could hardly be more stark.

Should the schism succeed – and the church in Ukraine is thoroughly divided – the Moscow patriarchate will lose believers, authority and money. Today it represents about half of the world’s 300 million Orthodox believers; about a third of these are in Ukraine and might be lost to the new church. Although the Moscow patriarchate is widely regarded as a creature of the ruling oligarchy, the church in Ukraine is hardly free of political links and interference either. Control of its property will be a prize for both sides in the coming struggle. The sacred and the secular are inextricably entwined here, as they were in Henry VIII’s break with Rome. The conflict is partly about who blesses the guns of which army, but since that is a question that affects a soldier’s willingness to fight, and die, it matters to millions who have no interest in theology.</s>Just one day before Orthodox Christmas, an official decree marking the independence of Ukraine’s new church was granted by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I to the head of the Kiev-established entity.

Bartholomew I of Constantinople has handed over the so-called tomos – a Patriarch’s decree proclaiming the newly formed Orthodox Church of Ukraine formally independent of the Russian Orthodox Church – to Metropolitan Epifaniy, the self-styled head of the new entity.

It has been brought back to Ukraine on Orthodox Christmas Eve. On January 7, Christmas Day, a celebration and rally will take place in Kiev.

The Ecumenical Patriarch, who is considered ‘first among equals’ in the Orthodox world, said the Ukrainians “have awaited this blessed day for seven entire centuries.” He claimed they could now enjoy “the sacred gift of emancipation, independence and self-governance, becoming free from every external reliance and intervention,” as cited by AP.

The tomos was signed in the presence of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, who traveled to Istanbul specifically for the occasion. He was joined by the 39-year-old Epiphanius, the self-styled Patriarch of the new Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

Poroshenko, who came to power following the Western-backed 2014 coup, began to push for the Ukrainian Church’s independence from the Moscow Patriarchy several months before the 2019 presidential elections. Now, nurturing the Orthodox Church of Ukraine remains part of his electoral campaign.

The Russian Orthodox Church vehemently opposed the creation of Ukraine’s new entity, calling it unlawful under canonic law and devastating for the centuries-old spiritual bond between Moscow and Kiev. Russian Patriarch Kirill has recently accused Ukraine of “blatant interference in church affairs” that would lead to a “civilizational catastrophe.”

The decision may the be beginning of a lasting schism in the global Orthodoxy and risks triggering conflicts among Ukraine’s Orthodox believers, observers say. “What happened due to the help of Patriarch Bartholomew is a legitimized split that existed during the last 30 years,” said Archbishop Kliment, spokesperson of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

“Instead of healing the schism, instead of uniting Orthodoxy, we’ve got an even bigger rift that exists exclusively for political reasons,” he maintained.

Constantinople’s decision was met with criticism not only from the Moscow Patriarchate but by some other Orthodox churches as well. The Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch and All the East John X said it is “unreasonable to mend the schism [in Ukraine] at the cost of the unity of the Orthodox world.”

The whole issue should first have been assessed and discussed with all other Orthodox churches to avoid “dangers that would lead to peace and unity neither in Ukraine, nor in the Orthodox world,” John X said in a letter addressed to Bartholomew I.

What Kiev is doing is “very dangerous because if, let’s just say, a number of autocephalous churches do not accept the Ukrainian new church, then we will have a schism, a break,” Fr Mark Tyson, an American Orthodox priest and rector of a West Virginia-based church, explained to RT. “This is the most serious question we’ve faced in close to a thousand years,” he added.

Many Ukrainian Orthodox believers belong to the Moscow church and “show no sign” of desire to stick with the newly created Orthodox Church of Ukraine, said Alexander Dvorkin, professor of Church History at St. Tikhon’s Orthodox University. Meanwhile, the new church will not be completely independent as it is likely to be “[tightly] controlled by Constantinople.”</s>Before signing, the priests held a prayer in the Patriarchal Church of St. George.

At the ceremony held in Istanbul on Saturday, January 5, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew signed the tomos of autocephaly, that is, canonical independence, of the newly-created Orthodox Church of Ukraine.

President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko, Parliament Speaker Andriy Parubiy, former President Viktor Yushchenko, and other guests attended the ceremony.

Before signing, the priests held a prayer in the Patriarchal Church of St. George. After that, OCU Metropolitan Epifaniy and Petro Poroshenko held a meeting with the Ecumenical Patriarch.

It was after this meeting that the signing ceremony took place.

Thus, the Orthodox Church of Ukraine became the 15th local Orthodox church.</s>The newly independent Ukrainian Orthodox Church held a service in Kyiv on January 7 marking Orthodox Christmas and celebrating their break with the Russian Orthodox Church. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and other top officials attended the ceremony at the St. Sofia Cathedral. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church became independent on January 6 with the handover of a "tomos" of autocephaly, an official church document, to Ukrainian Metropolitan Epifaniy. The development ends more than 330 years of Russian religious control in Ukraine.</s>There is no question, Russian commentator Stanislav Belkovsky says, that the grant of the tomos of autocephaly to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine is “the beginning of the end” of the Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate, something all the more likely because Moscow didn’t think Ukrainian autocephaly would happen.

That is just one sign of how out of touch the church hierarchy is and how it failed to make an argument with the Universal Patriarch in religious terms but limited itself to politics alone, an approach, Belkovsky says, which almost certainly guaranteed its loss on Ukraine and more besides (afterempire.info/2019/01/05/belkovskiy-rpc/).

The hierarchy of the ROC MP around Patriarch Kirill thus has shown itself to be more an arm of the secular authorities than a religious organization, perhaps not surprising, the commentator says, because “faith in God is not an obligatory condition for membership in the Orthodox Church in present-day Russia.”

The ROC MP was set up “as is well known by Joseph Stalin in September 1943 as atype of ministry which should fulfill specific subfunctions in the general system of state power” in the USSR. Only at the end of the 1980s and beginning of the 1990s did it separate in fact from the state. But very rapidly, the ROC MP returned to being what it had been, an arm of the state.

That origin and that return, Belkovsky says, has played “a bad joke” on the ROC MP: its subordination to the Kremlin in all things including in particular the 2014 invasion of Ukraine has led “the inevitable recognition of Ukrainian autocephaly” first by the Universal Patriarch in Constantinople and soon by Orthodox churches throughout the world.

Before 2014, few considered Ukrainian autocephaly possible, “but everything changed after 2014 precisely because the ROC MP not only did not distance itself from the Putin state but demonstrably deepened its dependence on it.” The ROC MP has no right to complain about the OCU’s ties with Kyiv given that its own with the Kremlin are far tighter.

Now, if Putin wants to replace Kirill with Tikhon as patriarch, there is nothing standing in his way; and that shows to all the world that the ROC MP has lost the right to present itself as a religious organization. It is that only for some of its hierarchs, some of its priests and some of its laity. For most of all three, it is something else, a political body.

That condemns it to lose status at home and abroad and means that when the current Russian government passes from the scene, so too will the ROC MP. It has no basis for an existence independent of the state and so will live and die with it, Belkovsky suggests.

Many commentators in Ukraine and even in Russia have adopted an even more negative line about the ROC MP. Perhaps the most damning are those who suggest that while the OCU received its tomos from the Universal Patriarch, the ROC MP received it not from a church official but from Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin (e.g., bitvazaurozay.livejournal.com/698691.html).

Such observations will do little to keep the ROC MP alive as a church, although they may lead the Kremlin and its security services to double down on their defense of their own ideological branch.</s>Ukraine’s newly-created independent Orthodox Church, which has broken with Moscow, could sow “chaos” in neighbouring Poland, the head of the Orthodox Church in Warsaw warned Monday.

Poland hosts about a million Ukrainian workers, and the leader of the Ukrainian Church, Metropolitan Yepifaniy, “could organise his own parishes in Poland for groups of faithful” among them, said Poland’s Metropolitan Sawa.

The Orthodox Church of Poland has some 600,000 followers, and like the new Ukrainian church, is independent of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Orthodox believers are a tiny minority in Poland, a predominantly Catholic EU country of 38 million people. In Ukraine, orthodoxy is the predominant religion.

“I recently heard that Pravyi Sektor (a Ukrainian paramilitary nationalist group) is already preparing the ground for Yepifaniy to visit Poland, chaos lies ahead,” Sawa told Poland’s Polityka weekly.

The nationalist organisation had backed the creation of an independent Ukrainian Church.

“Ukrainian authorities should first unify the country, put an end to the war and only then deal with issues like the Church,” Sawa added, referring to the armed conflict with Moscow-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine.

The Istanbul-based Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew, the highest Orthodox authority, on Sunday presented a formal decree confirming the creation of an independent Ukrainian church to its leader, Yepifaniy, finalising a historic break with the Russian Orthodox Church.

Moscow, in response, cut ties with the patriarchate in Istanbul.

The decree opened the way for Ukraine’s Orthodox Church to be recognised by other branches of orthodoxy and other churches.

Sawa on Monday also questioned Yepifaniy’s legitimacy, calling the 39-year-old a “layman” who was elected “illegally”.

Yepifaniy was ordained by the Kiev Patriarch Filaret, excommunicated by Moscow for creating a dissident church in Ukraine in 1992 after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Filaret was later recognised by the Istanbul-based Orthodox patriarch.

Ukraine’s newly created independent Orthodox Church held its first Christmas service in Kiev Monday. Orthodox believers celebrate Christmas according to the Julian Calendar.

For more than 300 years, the Ukrainian Church was split into three, with one branch overseen by the Patriarch of Moscow.

The Kiev government considered this unacceptable given Ukraine’s ongoing war with Moscow-backed rebels in the country’s east, which has already killed more than 10,000 people.</s>A Christmas Eve mass was held on Sunday by the Fener Greek Orthodox Patriarchate in Istanbul.

The celebrations began early Sunday with a mass held in Hagia Yorgi Church led by Patriarch Bartholomew and Metropolitan Epiphany of the new Orthodox Church of Ukraine.

On Saturday, the Orthodox Church of Ukraine was formally got independence at a ceremony in Istanbul after receiving the Tomos of Autocephaly (autonomy) from Fener Greek Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew at the Greek Orthodox Church in Istanbul.

Bartholomew had said Sunday mass marks a step for the independence of Orthodox Church and Poroshenko's attendance at the ceremony gave them power.

The service was followed by a ritual at the Fener dock in the Golden Horn, during which the patriarch will throw a large cross into the sea to be retrieved by a group of swimmers.</s>As Orthodox Churches around the world celebrate Christmas, two countries which are home to millions of believers are bitterly divided.

Religion itself is the cause.

On the eve of the holy day--which the Orthodox Church celebrates on January 7th in the contemporary calendar--the spiritual leader of Orthodox Christians, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, presented the Ukrainian Patriarch Epifaniy with the document granting the Ukrainian Church independence from Moscow, confirming a decision taken in October.

The creation of the independent Ukrainian Church seems like a spiritual matter. It also has very grave political implications. The move threatens to inflame still further tension between Russia and Ukraine: two countries whose post-Communist eras have involved religious revival--and armed conflict.

Although Russia and Ukraine have a shared history going back hundreds of years, their relationship over the last quarter century has often been troubled. Until 1991, both countries were part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. When the USSR fell apart, Ukraine became independent from Moscow. Part of its history since has focused on defining its new relationship with Russia.

It has not always been easy: bitter disputes over gas prices took on an international dimension when the row disrupted onward supplies to western Europe.

The real crisis came in 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea, provoking bitter condemnation--and extensive sanctions--from western countries. The confrontation has continued, with conflict spreading subsequently to other regions. Announcing further sanctions in November, the State Department made reference to "Russia’s illegal purported annexation and occupation of Crimea and use of force to control parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Eastern Ukraine".

The conflict has killed thousands. It has been the biggest challenge to the leadership of the Ukrainian president, Petro Poroshenko, during his time in office. A little over a month ago, he accused his Russian counterpart, Russian resident, Vladimir Putin, of wanting to take over the whole of Ukraine.

Russia has never publicly declared any such intention. It has, however, persistently opposed any Ukrainian plans to build closer ties with western institutions including the European Union, and especially NATO.

The political significance of the granting of independence to the Ukrainian Church was underlined by the fact that President Poroshenko travelled to Istanbul for the ceremony at the weekend, and attended Monday's Orthodox Christmas service in Kiev.

Although relatively few Russians are churchgoers--save on major occasions such as Christmas and Easter--the Orthodox faith is a hugely significant part of Russia's post-Soviet identity. Surveys regularly suggest that a majority of Russians identify themselves as Orthodox Christians.

In that sense, the Ukrainian Church's independence is a challenge to Russia's view of itself as a guardian of Orthodox Christian values. Last month, President Putin criticized Secretary of State Pompeo for discussing the matter with Kiev; he even warned that church property disputes could turn "bloody".

The Russian news agency, TASS, has given prominence to Christmas messages from both President Putin--who himself attended a Christmas service in St Petersburg--and Patriarch Kirill. TASS' view of the new church itself was made clear over the weekend, in a story which referred to "the new Ukrainian structure, the so-called Orthodox Church of Ukraine".

The issue of the Ukrainian Church's new status adds new tension to the confrontation between Russia and Ukraine, and is likely to be an important factor to watch in the coming year.</s>CLIFTON ─ The Ukrainian Orthodox Holy Ascension Church has been holding a divine liturgy for Orthodox Christmas for nearly 100 years.

This year’s service, held on Monday in accordance with the Julian calendar, was different. In Clifton and around the world, the Ukrainian diaspora celebrated its first Christmas in independence.

On Sunday, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church severed ties with the Russian Orthodox Church and became autonomous after more than four centuries under Russian jurisdiction.

“We have been waiting for this for hundreds of years,” said Oleksii Holchuk, pastor of the Clifton church. “It was a huge step in our independence and I’m really happy to live in this historical time.”

Religion: Why the Eastern Orthodox Church is suing Princeton University

Holchuck spoke of the split during his homily, telling dozens of parishioners that they have finally been given back both a nation and a church. Ukraine declared its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.

“Now we make one big step for peace in our country,” Holchuck said in an interview. “The Russian church had been used for political ways, for destroying Ukrainian independence so this step is a really important step for our country and all Ukrainians.”

The Ukrainian church had been loyal to the Moscow patriarchate since 1686, when it abandoned allegiance to the historical seat of the Eastern Orthodox Church in Constantinople, now Istanbul, under pressure from Russia.

An effort to break that hold began in earnest after the Ukrainian revolution in 2014 and in December, Ukraine’s president and nearly 200 bishops and religious leaders gathered in a church in Kiev to choose a head of a new independent Ukrainian church.

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, the spiritual leader of Eastern Orthodox Christians, handed a decree of independence to the newly appointed Metropolitan Epiphanius of Ukraine in a four-hour ceremony in Istanbul on Sunday.

The Moscow patriarch had overseen the largest community of Orthodox Christians in the world with about 150 million worshippers in Russia and most areas of the former Soviet Union. The loss of the Ukrainian Orthodox cuts the number of parishes beholden to Moscow by a third.

For Irina Saralidze, a parishioner of the Clifton church who immigrated to the city from Moscow eight months ago, the move was inconsequential. It was mired in political nuances that she did not quite understand.

“It doesn’t really matter, I believe in one God,” she said in Russian. “I don’t care what church I have to go to pray.”

But for those with Ukrainian roots, the schism was monumental.

Wolodymyr Mohuchy, a member of the Clifton church since 1971, immigrated to the U.S. from Ukraine in 1950 and said he had long awaited Ukraine’s independence to extend to its church.

“Thank God it finally got accomplished,” Mohuchy said. “Everybody’s uplifted by it.”

Olena Tylko Halkowycz, a Teaneck resident with Ukrainian ancestors, watched the ceremony in Istanbul online and said she was touched by scenes of the Ukrainian President, Petro Poroshenko, celebrating with his family.

“I feel that we reached another milestone in the history of Ukraine,” she said.

Monday’s divine liturgy followed the same script as the many before it and yet the Christmas carols had a different feel to them, said Holchuck.

The lyrics spoke of a new happiness, he said, and this time, that could genuinely be taken to heart.

John Lenczuk, president of the Ukrainian Orthodox Holy Ascension Church, anticipates more happiness ahead.

He believes the newly independent Ukrainian church will bring more parishioners to Clifton now that every facet of Ukrainian orthodoxy has united under one church.

“Everything is where it should be,” he said.
The chancellor of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) describes the granting of autocephaly on January 5 to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine as "a secular event."