Head of Greek Church does not take responsibility for recognition of OCU
His Beatitude Ieronymos will propose to the forthcoming Bishops’ Council of the Greek Church to consider the “Ukrainian issue”.
The Primate of the Greek Orthodox Church, His Beatitude Ieronymos, refused to take the advantage of his Synod-granted right to personally decide on the recognition of the OCU and delegated this decision to the Council of Bishops to be held in October 2019, Greek edition Romfea reports.
On August 28, the Holy Synod of the Greek Orthodox Church finalised its work, which was to make a decision on the “Ukrainian issue”. According to Romfea, the discussion of this issue "took place in a calm environment in which all the synodals expressed their opinion".
According to the publication, one of the Synod’s hierarchs noted that "we jointly recognized the privilege of the Archbishop to deal with this issue independently".
Archbishop Ieronymos listened to the position of the Synod with great interest and thanked its members for their support and recognition of his privileges. However, he did not take the responsibility for this decision: “I cannot take such a responsibility; I will delegate it to the Hierarchy (to the Council of Bishops – Ed.).”
At the same time, according to Romfea, one of the synodal hierarchs emphasized: “In other cases, we did not have to recognize autocephaly by the entire hierarchy as it was with other autocephalous Churches in the Balkans. Here we have a special case with schismatics who were not ordained and were excommunicated."
Earlier, the UOJ wrote that, according to the famous Greek theologian, Protopresbyter Theodore Zisis, "outside the Church there will be those who will be in communion with the Ukrainian schism following Patriarch Bartholomew".
