Ukraine Church Split Risks New Russia Escalation

Date: 12 October 2018 - 21:39

News ID: ۵۸۴۰۲

KIEV/ISTANBUL (Dispatches) -- Ukraine secured approval on Thursday to establish an independent church, marking the biggest split in Christianity for a thousand years which the Russian clergy fiercely opposes.
A three-day synod presided over by the Ecumenical Patriarch in Istanbul, seat of the global spiritual leader of roughly 300 million Orthodox Christians, endorsed Ukraine’s request for an "autocephalous” (independent) church.
The synod will "proceed to the granting of Autocephaly to the Church of Ukraine,” a statement said.
The synod took several decisions to pave the way for Ukraine to set up its church, including rehabilitating a Ukrainian patriarch excommunicated by the Russian Orthodox Church for leading a breakaway church in the early 1990s.
In retaliation, the Russian Orthodox Church said it would break eucharistical relations with the Ecumenical Patriarchate, Interfax news agency quoted a spokesman as saying.
The tussle over Ukraine’s spiritual future flows from the poisoning of relations between Kiev and Moscow after Crimea’s vote in 2014 to join Russia and the outbreak of separatist fighting in Ukraine’s east that has killed over 10,000 people.
Ukraine’s victory on the church issue could bolster pro-Western President Petro Poroshenko’s campaign in what is expected to be a tight election race next year.
"The decisions of the Ecumenical Patriarch and Synod finally dispelled the imperial illusions and chauvinistic fantasies of Moscow,” Poroshenko said.
The Russian Orthodox Church has compared Ukraine’s moves to the Great Schism of 1054 that split western and eastern Christianity, and warned they could lead to an irreversible rupture in the global Orthodox community.
On Thursday, its spokesman said Istanbul had "crossed a red line” by reversing the excommunication of Patriarch Filaret. Filaret hopes to lead the independent church. The Kremlin also voiced its displeasure, saying it opposed anything leading to a split in the Orthodox faith.
Ukraine and Russia trace their Orthodox Christian roots to Volodymyr the Great, the prince whose baptism in 988 in Kiev led to the christianization of the region known as the "Kievan Rus”.
The Russian Orthodox Church has attacked Ukraine’s bid for independence as a gambit by Poroshenko to shore up his flagging popularity. It calls the Kiev Patriarchate illegitimate and its spokesman warned that the split would lead to a "tragic and possibly irretrievable schism of the whole Orthodoxy”.