ROC: Absence of a number of Churches in Amman makes it no less important
The ROC believes that the refusal of a number of Local Churches to participate in the Council of Primates in Amman doesn't make this forum less authoritative.
On February 26, 2020, the head of the Synodal Department for External Church Relations of the Russian Orthodox Church, Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, stated that the aim of the Council of Primates of Local Orthodox Churches in Jordan is not decision-making but a fraternal discussion of urgent problems and ways out of the crisis, reports Interfax.
“The absence of certain Churches in Amman will not make the meeting less important. At one time, when the four Churches announced their refusal to participate in the Cretan Council, Patriarch Bartholomew held it anyway, and the decisions of this Council are considered binding in the Churches that took part in it,” the hierarch explained.
At the same time, he noted that at a meeting in Amman no decisions are supposed to be made. “This meeting is not for making decisions but for a fraternal discussion of urgent problems and ways out of the crisis,” he added.
According to the hierarch, the Russian Orthodox Church is ready to discuss inter-Orthodox problems in any format – bilateral, trilateral, multilateral. “Not everyone went to the Crete Council convened by the Patriarch of Constantinople in 2016,” he recalled.
Metropolitan Hilarion believes that someone should help the Orthodox Churches find ways out of the crisis. “Today, the Jerusalem Patriarch took the lead in organizing the discussion, and we are grateful to him for this,” the representative of the Russian Orthodox Church said.
“Let's hope that the meeting in Amman will be the beginning of the process of discussing pan-Orthodox problems, which other Churches will join in the course of time,” he concluded.
The UOJ presents the online broadcast of the event.
