The Serbian Orthodox Church (SOC) published an official announcement in connection with the signing of an agreement between Patriarch Bartholomew and the President of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko. “The unity of Orthodoxy is undoubtedly more important than any claims and ambitions,” Belgrade believes.
According to Bishop Irenaeus, who signed the appeal, this announcement leads to the “independence of the groups of schismatics”. And this happens despite the fact that the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) has twice as many parishioners than the schismatics, and also without attention to the position of the Moscow Patriarchate and local churches, including the Serbian Orthodox Church.
None of the local churches officially supported the actions of Constantinople on the Ukrainian issue, noted in the SOC.
“It is especially disturbing that Bartholomew does all this in cooperation with the secular authorities, with politicians, among whom there are many dissenters and Uniates,” the message says.
Irenaeus recalls that this situation is similar to the case of the Macedonian Church, which is not canonical, but enjoys political support.
In the message of the SOC there are several questions that are still unanswered: why is there no attention to the canonical requirements of the Russian Orthodox Church? How can you, in the blink of an eye, make a dissenter of the “Patriarch of Kiev,” as he is called by the people? How can one cancel one’s status in the current local church, if no one has questioned it for centuries, including Constantinople itself?
At the end, Bishop Irenaeus writes that it is necessary to pray to God and believe that the supremacy in the church belongs only to Jesus Christ, and the unity of the church “is more important than all claims and ambitions.”