News

15.06.2007, [16:47] // UOC-KP // RISU.ORG.UA

Kyiv – The 2nd All-Ukrainian Church-Civic Forum “For a National Ukrainian Orthodox Church,” held on 12 June 2007, composed a letter to Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople asking him to support their cause.

The letter requests the patriarch and Synod of the Church of Constantinople “to acknowledge the Ukrainian Orthodox Church–Kyivan Patriarchate [UOC-KP] as the national and autocephalous church of Ukraine.”

In the letter addressed to the patriarch, it says: “We support your proposition about the need to acknowledge a national Orthodox church in Ukraine and overcome the separation of Ukrainian Orthodoxy caused by outside factors. The national, autocephalous status of the Ukrainian church is based on church canons… the 34th apostolic rule, the 17th rule of the 4th Ecumenical Council, the 38th rule of the 6th Ecumenical Council, and the apothegm of Patriarch Photios that Patriarch Gregory used in his tomos about the autocephaly of the church in Poland of 13 November 1924.”

The letter also comments on the recent unification of the Russian Orthodox Church and Russian Orthodox Church Abroad, “in the light of which the demands of the Moscow Patriarchate to the Kyivan Patriarchate for ‘repentance’ are unjust and hypocritical.” The authors of the letter also mention the “unlawful practice of the Moscow Patriarchate ‘repeating’ sacraments administered by the Kyivan Patriachate.”

The letter was signed by UOC-KP Archbishop Dymytrii of Periaslav and Khmelnytskyi and Petro Yushchenko, joint heads of the forum.

Source and previous related RISU news: