The Ecumenical Throne and the Church of Ukraine: The Documents Speak

Regardless of our readers’ respective positions on the question of Ukrainian autocephaly, the involvement of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, and the rupture in communion enacted by the Moscow Patriarchate, we urge each and every one of you to read the document linked above. It summarizes the Ecumenical Patriarchate’s historical and pastoral rationale for moving forward with the project of an autocephalous Orthodox Church of Ukraine.

The main report runs to a brief twenty-two pages, followed by fifteen pages of appendices. These include photocopies of the 17th-century correspondence between Constantinople and Moscow regarding the status of the Kyivan Metropolitanate.

For the sake of clarity and historical accuracy one wishes that this document had adhered throughout to the scholarly consensus of naming St. Vladimir’s (Volodymyr in Ukrainian) 10th-century Kyivan principality as Rus’ (Русь) rather than Kyivan “Russia” (Россия).

See Orthodoxy in Dialogue’s extensive Ukraine section in our Archives by Author.