ROC comments on remarks of US ambassador to Greece about split in Orthodoxy
According to Vladimir Legoida, World Orthodoxy was split by the State Department with the hands of Phanar.
On December 11, 2020, Vladimir Legoida, Chairman of the ROC Synodal Department for Church Relations with Society and the Media, commented on the remarks of the US Ambassador to Greece that the ROC was to blame for the split in World Orthodoxy.
Responding to Payett's allegations that "the ROC is trying to undermine the unity of Orthodoxy" because of the Tomos of the OCU, Vladimir Legoida reminded that "this American diplomat was the US ambassador to Ukraine during the events on the Maidan and together with Victoria Nuland distributed notorious ‘State Department cookies’ on the streets of Kyiv.”
The representative of the ROC stated that "in the rhetoric of the US ambassador to Athens there is a clearly inappropriate mixing of interstate issues and issues of inter-church relations."
He also stressed that "the attempt to accuse Russia and the Russian Church of splitting World Orthodoxy which was actually initiated by the State Department with the hands of Phanar" looks cynical.
Earlier, the UOJ wrote that the US ambassador to Greece accused the ROC of splitting World Orthodoxy.