Pat. Bartholomew Refuses Pan-Orthodox Council About Ukraine Because of Failure of Crete Council

Pravoslavie ^ | 3/4/19

[marshmallow]

As OrthoChristian has reported several times already, Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople explicitly rejected His Beatitude Patriarch John X of Antioch’s late-December call for a pan-Orthodox council to resolve the ongoing Ukrainian crisis (see here, here, and here).

On December 24, Pat. Bartholomew wrote to the autocephalous Local Churches, asking them to acknowledge the results of December 15’s “unification council” that created a new, nationalist church in Ukraine. In response, Pat. John implored the primate of Constantinople to convene a Synaxis of the Primates to address the issue.

The full text of Pat. Bartholomew’s reply to Pat. John’s reply has since been published in Russian on the official site of the Russian Orthodox Church, and in English on Orthodox Synaxis, revealing Pat. Bartholomew’s reasons for rejecting the call to deal with the Ukrainian issue synodically.

As has long been suspected, Constantinople’s decision to act unilaterally in Ukraine is in direct response to the failure of 2016’s “Holy and Great Council” on Crete, which the Antiochian, Bulgarian, Georgian, and Russian Churches did not attend. His Eminence Metropolitan Kallistos (Ware), a hierarch of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, stated in a December interview that he does not have any insider information as to why Pat. Bartholomew has chosen now to intervene in Ukraine, but in that context he did note that the Patriarch must have been very disappointed that the Russian Church did not attend the Crete council.

In a September interview, His Eminence Metropolitan Hilarion (Alfeyev) spoke about how Pat. Bartholomew was very offended that the four Churches did not attend Crete, and that he told him personally that he believed the Russian Church had plotted with the Antiochian, Bulgarian, and Georgian Churches to not attend the council.