Ecumenical Patriarch in the case of restoration of Kyiv Patriarchate may suspend the operation of Tomos

The Ecumenical Patriarch, in the event of a revision of the Unification Council decision and the restoration of the Kyiv Patriarchate with honorary Patriarch Filaret, may suspend the operation of Tomos to grant autocephaly to Orthodox Church of Ukraine until the canonical crisis is overcome.

This is stated in an official statement of Metropolitan Pereyaslav-Khmelnitskiy and Oleksandr Vishnevskiy (Drabynko).

It is noted that the title of “honorary patriarch of Kyiv and all of Ukraine”, which is regularly used in relation to Metropolitan Filaret in the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, was not approved by any conciliar decision of the OCU. According to the decision of the Holy Synod of the Constantinople Patriarchate of October 11, 2018, Vladyka Filaret was accepted into communion just as “the former Kyiv Metropolitan” (and not as a patriarch).

“Today, when Tomos is received, Metropolitan Filaret seeks to reconsider the decision of the Unity Council, restore the Kyiv Patriarchate and again lead the church. However, the result of such actions may be, if not the recall of Tomos, then the suspension of its action until the moment of overcoming the canonical crisis in the Orthodox Church of Ukraine,” said Drabynko.

According to him, the efforts of Metropolitan Filaret to revise the canonical norms of the functioning of OCU recorded in Tomos constitute a significant threat to the future of OCU. Namely, to retain for OCU the jurisdictional authority over the parishes in Ukrainian diaspora and to abandon the rotational model of Sacred Synod. According to the provisions of Tomos, the issue of the diaspora cannot be resolved by Kiev without the consent of the Mother Church.

“As for the desire of Metropolitan Filaret to expand the institution of the permanent members of the Synod from three to 12, this is nothing but an attempt to abandon the democratic Greek model of church government in favor of the Russian, where the narrow circle of hierarchs decides the fate of the church The model received the sadly name “Metropolitan Bureau”),” Metropolitan Alexander is convinced.

As reported by the “Journalist”, Metropolitan Epiphanius declared that there is no split in  Orthodox Church of Ukraine, and there will not be.