Head of Phanar: Kyiv Patriarchate has never existed

Patriarch Bartholomew. Photo: strana.ua

Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople said that the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyiv Patriarchate had never existed, Strana.ua newspaper reports.

The journalist asked the head of Phanar to comment on the statements of Filaret Denisenko that Constantinople did not give real autocephaly to Ukraine but only liquidated the independent Kyiv Patriarchate and subordinated it to the Ecumenical Patriarch, changing it for the OCU.

Answering this question, the head of Phanar noted that “Filaret was reinstated in his episcopal dignity as a former Metropolitan of Kyiv”.

He stressed that "the so-called Kyiv Patriarchate does not exist and never existed."

According to Patriarch Bartholomew, “the granting of autocephaly to the OCU was not related to either politics or geopolitics. Believers were reinstated in communion with the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church."

In his opinion, “all cases of granting autocephaly to other Churches – Russian, Serbian, Romanian, Bulgarian, Georgian, Greek, Polish, Albanian, Czech and Slovak – were handled by the Patriarchate of Constantinople without consultation and discussion at the pan-Orthodox level; the same procedure was applied when issuing the Tomos on autocephaly to Ukraine.”

Earlier, the UOJ wrote that according to Filaret Denisenko, Patriarch Bartholomew seeks to destroy the Kyiv Patriarchate.

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