MP DECR: The Holy Synod to assess decisions of Greek Orthodox Church on OCU
The Russian Orthodox Church commented on today's decision of the Bishops’ Council of the Greek Orthodox Church to recognize the OCU.
The Holy Synod of the Moscow Patriarchate will give the assessment of the consequences of the decision of the GOC for relations between the Greek and Russian Orthodox Churches, said Archpriest Nikolai Balashov, deputy head of the Department for External Church Relations of the Russian Orthodox Church, reports "RIA Novosti".
“Despite the well-founded proposals of a number of metropolitans to refrain from making a decision at present, the Bishops’ Council of the Church of Greece made a decision in favour of recognizing the OCU, while strangely expressing the hope that the ecclesiastical ‘autocephaly’ of Ukraine is ‘extremely useful for the Orthodox Church and valuable for strengthening relations between the two autocephalous sister Churches of Great Russia and Ukraine’. An assessment of the consequences of this decision for relations between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Greek Church will be given by the Holy Synod of the Moscow Patriarchate,” the ROC representative emphasized.
At the same time, he noted that the Russian Orthodox Church is multinational and is not limited in its pastoral care by believers living in Russia, "in particular, tens of millions of its members are citizens of Ukraine, and they did not ask for any autocephaly".
We recall that at an extraordinary meeting of the Bishops’ Council, which was held in Athens on October 12, the hierarchs of the Greek Orthodox Church recognized " canonical right of the Ecumenical Patriarchate to grant autocephaly, as well as the privilege of the primate of the Church of Greece to further deal with the issue of the recognition of the Church of Ukraine ".
