Primate of Cyprus denies being financed from US

Archbishop Chrysostomos and Patriarch Bartholomew. Photo: orthodoxtimes

Ukraine has always been under the Patriarchate of Constantinople, the Phanar was not going to yield it to the Moscow Patriarchate, and all the talk about financing the Phanar and the Primate of Cyprus from the United States in political interests is “nonsense”. The head of the Church of Cyprus, Archbishop Chrysostomos, said this in an interview with Politis.

Answering the question whether it is possible to overcome the crisis caused by the "Ukrainian case", the Cypriot Primate noted that "this crisis has always existed in Orthodoxy", and when he supported Moscow, "unfortunately, he knew only half of the truth". Patriarch Bartholomew told him the whole truth, added the archbishop.

The Archbishop explained that "Ukraine has always remained under the Ecumenical Patriarchate" like all Orthodoxy, and when Constantinople granted Moscow autocephaly, it only entrusted it with governing the Church in Ukraine, "as was the case with the New Lands in Greece".

“The Kyiv Metropolis first commemorated the Ecumenical Patriarch, and then the Moscow Patriarch,” said Archbishop Chrysostomos. “During communism, the commemoration of the Ecumenical Patriarch was stopped. When communism fell, Bartholomew asked to return Ukraine to the Ecumenical Patriarchate, but the late Patriarch of Moscow Alexy told him: "Forget about it, after so many years."

He stressed that "the Ecumenical Patriarch never agreed to hand Ukraine to the Moscow Patriarchate, but it constantly gave time to study the issue" and wanted to discuss it at the Crete Council in June 2016. According to Archbishop Chrysostomos, the Patriarch of the Russian Church allegedly spoke only “half of the truth. He did not tell us that Bartholomew gave them four years to solve this problem".

In March 2020, the head of the Phanar "explained that Ukraine has never submitted to Moscow and all the documents are there - whoever wants to can go to study them".

As for the reproaches for the reinstatement of schismatics, then, in his words, "this happened many times throughout the life of the Church", for example, in the Bulgarian Church.

The head of the Church of Cyprus also stressed that he did not agree with the reproaches that the head of the Phanar was financed by the United States: “This is nonsense. Do I or the Ecumenical Patriarch need America or someone else to give us money?"

Earlier, the ROC recalled that the Phanar in the twentieth century supported the Renovationist schism.

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