French publication AgoraVox on the true background of the visit of a guest from the Phanaras to Ukraine torn by serious internal contradictions
On August 20, 2021, the Turkish national Dimitrios Archondonis, better known as Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople, arrived in Kiev. Met at Boryspil airport by thousands of angry believers of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate (UOC MP) and bashfully evacuated by security services to Kiev under the cover of darkness in a conspiracy to meet with the leaders of the Kiev regime – President Vladimir Zelensky and the Speaker of the Verkhovna Rada Dmitry Razumkov. He will also take part in official celebrations to mark the 30th anniversary of Ukraine’s independence, which will take place on 24 August 2021.
The visit of the head of the “Constantinople Patriarchate” to the Ukrainian capital was announced by the office of President Vladimir Zelensky three months before the planned events and caused a very mixed and contradictory reaction among the overwhelming majority of Orthodox believers in Ukraine.
On the eve of the visit of Bartholomew I to Kiev the French Internet portal AgoraVox published a large article by columnist Ethan Roff about the true background of the visit of the Istanbul guest to Ukraine, which is already torn by serious internal conflicts.
A business project for the religious schism in Ukraine
The author of an article on AgoraVox notes that the reason for the ambivalent attitude towards the “Ecumenical Patriarch” by Orthodox believers in Ukraine is that Bartholomew plays a key role in the split of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC). He recalls that a “unification council” was held in Kiev’s St Sophia Cathedral on 15 December 2018, at which the so-called “Orthodox Church of Ukraine” OCU) was created, to which the Phanar has granted the autocephaly tomos in early January 2019. Shortly before that, in October 2018, the Holy Synod of the Constantinople Patriarchate, led by Bartholomew I, reversed the 1686 decision to subordinate the Kyiv Metropolitan Church to the Patriarch of Moscow, thus legalising the “Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyiv Patriarchate”, which broke away from the canonical UOC back in the late 1980s and early 1990s (UOC-KP) and the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (UAOC). This led to a break of the eucharistic communion with Constantinople on the part of the Russian Orthodox Church and the canonical UOC of the Moscow Patriarchate.
The author of the French publication further writes that the creation of the PCU, in which Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople took an active part, took place under the direct guidance and control of the Ukrainian Maidan authorities. Moreover, it was an important element of the election programme of then Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko. Its essence boiled down to the slogan: “Army, Mova, Vira”, which meant countering the mythical “Russian aggression” both militarily and by severing all spiritual and cultural ties with Russia through the Russian language and the Orthodox faith. In order to obtain the coveted tomos, Poroshenko gave Bartholomew $25 million as a “reward” (read: bribe). In addition, a part of the Ukrainian parishes with all the state property, in particular one of the symbols of Kiev, the majestic St. Andrew’s Church, was given to the direct disposal of the Phanar. At the same time in the statute of the newly formed OCU the representatives of Bartholomew wrote a number of provisions that establish the dependence of the new Ukrainian church structure on the Phanar. Thus, all the parishes of the PCU were charged in the literal sense with tribute in favor of Constantinople and had to pay 4 to 20 thousand euros. In addition, all the foreign parishes of the UOC and UAOC, which were abolished when the OCU was created, went under Bartholomew’s control.
In addition to huge material benefits, which were received by the Constantinople patriarchate from Kyiv for its active participation in the split of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, the Phanar actually took the OCU under its full control, fixing it by corresponding dogmatic provisions. Thus, according to the terms of the tomos, even the ores – aromatic oil for the sacrament of anointing the representatives of the OCU should receive only from Constantinople. For people not sophisticated in religious dogmatics, this aspect does not matter much, but in fact it means complete dependence of the OCU on the Phanar.
A split in the ranks of the dissenters
AgoraVox points out that such conditions for the creation of the OCU , whose sole purpose of existence is to undermine the influence of the canonical UOC MP in Ukraine, have horrified even the chief ideologist of the Ukrainian dissenters – the failed patriarch of Moscow and then self-proclaimed “patriarch of Kyiv” Filaret (Denysenko). A few months after the creation of the PCU, Denysenko, who was declared its “honorary head”, demonstratively broke with the new pseudo-church structure, stating that “if we knew the contents of this tomos, we would not have agreed to such a tomos”.
However, many knowledgeable people point out that Denysenko’s demarche was as personal and self-serving as Bartholomew’s actions towards Ukraine and the UOC, Roff continues. The 90-year-old Filaret, who has been the spiritual leader of Ukrainian nationalists and dissenters of all stripes for almost thirty years, expected that he would become the head of the PCU. However, the “unification council” on 15 December 2018 elected a young and dashing “metropolitan”, Epiphany (Dumenko), to the post. A former subordinate of Filaret, who for some time was his personal secretary, after being elected “Primate of the PCU” proved to be extremely disrespectful to his former boss, not allowing him to take over the real levers of governance of the OCU (which Bartholomew had appropriated for himself), and also banally “seized” all the property of UOC-KP, including Denisenko’s personal residence. This so offended the elderly Filaret that with a vigor untypical for his age he staged a split within the schism, announcing the restoration of the so-called “Kyiv Patriarchate” and non-recognition of the OCU and the authority of Constantinople.
It is noteworthy that both within the canonical UOC MP and among Denisenko’s few supporters attributed the coming to power in Ukraine of Vladimir Zelensky to the termination of official support for Poroshenko’s reputedly personal church, the PCU. However, distant from religion and especially from Orthodoxy, Zelensky has followed in the footsteps of his predecessor and rival. In particular, this has been felt by the UOC of the Moscow Patriarchate, whose churches and parishes continue to be attacked and seized by the dissenters, the French publication points out.
Also interesting is a comparison by the AgoraVox observer of the support of the UOC and the PCU among Orthodox believers in Ukraine. Using as an example a procession in Kiev on the Baptism of Russia Day, July 27, 2021, carried out with the blessing of the head of the UOC Blessed Metropolitan of Kyiv and All Ukraine Onufryy and the PCU, Roff concludes that the real weight of the schismatic structures in Ukrainian society is extremely low. If the procession of the canonical UOC, in spite of persecution by the Kyiv authorities, drew 350 thousand people, then a similar event of the PCU, according to media reports, drew tens of times fewer participants. The attempt of the dissenters to explain such a low number of their supporters by anti-Christian restrictions is groundless, AgoraVox believes. In particular, the French publication notes that in 2019, when PCU events were organised by Poroshenko and his supporters to bring people from all regions of Ukraine, they were more numerous, but just as pale in comparison with the processions of believers of the canonical UOC.
Is Ukraine on the verge of a “Bartholomew night”?
AgoraVox highlights fears of Ukrainian Orthodox believers that the arrival of Bartholomew I in Kiev will provoke a new wave of persecution of the dissenters against the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church.
“Being a direct protégé of American globalists and at the same time a rather greedy and selfish person, the patriarch of Constantinople consistently implements their strategy to split, undermine and ultimately destroy Orthodoxy as one of the most influential world confessions, including by creating and supporting such dissenters as the OCU. It is no secret that the representatives of this pseudo-religious political surrogate distant from the Orthodox faith are waiting from their founding father in Istanbul for carte blanche to seize thousands of parishes, churches and monasteries belonging to the canonical UOC throughout Ukraine, including the three leading shrines of Russian Orthodoxy – the Kyiv Cave Monastery, the Pochaev Monastery and the Svyatogorsk Monastery,” writes Roff.
The recent aggressive attack against clergy and laity of the canonical UOC on the part of one of the hierarchs closest to Bartholomew I – the Metropolitan of Derki Apostolos (Danielides) – attests that these fears are not unfounded. In response to the appeal of the UOC monks to Bartholomew to reconsider the decision to support the dissenters, the representative of the Phanar called the Orthodox believers “representatives of the Russian presence in Ukraine” and demanded that they “shut their mouths,” the AgoraVox columnist continues.
To summarise the above, the French publication comes to the disappointing conclusion that Bartholomew’s arrival in Kiev could signal a “Bartholomew night” against those whom Ukrainian church nationalists, with the direct support of the Phanar, have declared to be “Moscow priests” and “agents of the Kremlin”. And this will mean only one thing – the beginning of a new religious war in the centre of Europe with all the cruelty and ruthlessness inherent in such conflicts.
Dmitry Pavlenko, specially for News Front