Zoria: There may be obstacles with Local Churches upholding SLC patriarchy

Spokesman of the UOC KP Eustartiy Zoria and Filaret Denisenko

There may be difficulties with the recognition by the Local Churches of the status of the patriarchy of the Single Local Church. This was reported on October 26 by Eustratiy Zoria during the Ukrinform press conference “The Ukrainian Church on the road to autocephalous approval”.

“We own up to possible complications with the immediate recognition on the part of some Local Churches of the Ukrainian Church as a Church with a patriarchal status,” Zoria admitted. “Because recently they were not ready to discuss even the autocephaly of the church. And when autocephaly is approved by the decision of the Ecumenical Patriarch, there may be complications on the way to recognizing it as a patriarchal church because of its high status.”

According to the spokesman of the UOC KP, the Ukrainian Church is worthy to be a patriarchate, since it has millions of believers, clergy, episcopate, more than a thousand years of history.

“But if the Churches are not ready and in order not to cause misunderstandings, our Church has decided: let their appeal to our primate the one common for diplomatic relations: they can call him archbishop and metropolitan, not using the title of patriarch if they are not yet ready”, said Zoria, adding that patriarchate will be offered as a further model for the SLC.

He compared this situation with the history of Greek Catholics, when in the 1960s Cardinal Joseph Slepoy declared himself patriarch of the UGCC, but the Vatican did not recognize this.

“They call their primate a patriarch, although Sviatoslav himself in official relations calls himself the supreme archbishop. Thus, he is both the archbishop and the patriarch,” explained Zoria.

Earlier, Eustratiy Zoria said that Tomos will allow him to participate in official contacts with the Catholic and Protestant Churches.

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