Metropolitan EPIFANIY of Kyiv and All Ukraine

Many Years, O Master! Іс полла еті, Деспота!

✠

On December 15, the Unification Council that took place in St. Sofia [Cathedral] of Kyiv elected the new Primate after the second round of voting. It is Metropolitan Epifaniy of Pereyaslav and Bila Tserkva of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Kyiv Patriarchate. The newly elected Primate of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church will hold the title of Metropolitan of Kyiv and All Ukraine.

Earlier, on December 13, the Bishops’ Council of the UOC-KP elected him as the only candidate to the office of Primate of the new Church.

192 delegates of the Unification Council participated in the election of the head of the new Church.

As previously reported, the Tomos of Autocephaly of the Ukrainian Church will be handed over to the newly appointed Primate, Metropolitan Epifaniy, on January 6 [Christmas Eve on the Julian calendar, Theophany on the Gregorian] by Patriarch Bartholomew in Istanbul. Read More

Earlier today, Orthodoxy in Dialogue editor Giacomo Sanfilippo’s maiden op-ed, Worse Than 1054? A Schism of Moscow’s Own Making, appeared at the Kyiv Post, Ukraine’s award-winning English-language newspaper. He shows that Kremlin and Patriarchate in Russia must be taken at their word when they announce to the world their intention to speak with one voice—Byzantine symphonia in the 21st century.

This suggests that we in the West would do well to greet everything that the Moscow Patriarchate has to say with the same wisdom of serpents and innocence of doves as we do anything issuing from the Kremlin. Clocking in at a brief 800-some words, Sanfilippo’s article is worth a read as a preface to the paragraphs below.

Metropolitan Hilarion (Alfeyev) of Volokolamsk is perhaps one of the Orthodox Church’s most recognizable figures on the world stage today. Chairman of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Department for External Church Relations (DECR), he travels around the globe as the Russian Orthodox Church’s main representative in both inter-Orthodox and ecumenical affairs. Nothing appears on the DECR website without his explicit approval, and by extension, that of Patriarch Kirill at whose pleasure the Metropolitan serves. 

Earlier today the DECR published a report with the very long title, His Holiness Patriarch Kirill Sends Letters to Religious Leaders, Senior Statesmen and Heads of International Organizations Regarding the Pressure Exerted by the Ukrainian Authorities on the Ukrainian Orthodox Church [Moscow Patriarchate] and the Government’s Interference in the Ecclesiastical Life in Ukraine. It begins: Read More

✠

Beneath your mercy we take refuge,
O Virgin Theotokos.
Do not despise our prayers in our need,
but deliver us from dangers,
O only Pure and only Blessed One.
Most-Holy Theotokos, save us. Most-Holy Theotokos, save us. Most-Holy Theotokos, save us.

✠

Під Твою милість прибігаємо,
Богородице Діво.
Молитвами нашими в скорботах не погорди,
але від бід ізбави нас,
Єдина Чиста і Благословенна.
Пресвята Богородице, спаси нас. Пресвята Богородице, спаси нас. Пресвята Богородице, спаси нас.

Read More

Honduran asylum-seeker Maria Meza and her daughters at the US-Mexico border. November 2018.

Would you like some milk of magnesia? asked the  grey-bobbed matriarch fresh from Standing Rock. Though I don’t think she meant any harm, she mom-shamed my sister, whose 2-month old slept swaddled to her chest. My niece was possibly the youngest marcher at the Women’s March 2017 in Washington DC. Other women would tell Abby, “You can tell her she was here some day,” but this mom told us that her son was back on the plains, recovering from a tear-gassing.

How did we end up there—sisters squeezing each other’s hands to reassure Abby, while letting her (im)possibility sink in? Would this new administration really use gas against women (and their children) on its land? Never. Surely?

We got there by metro, like the half-million other marchers that day. We got there with faith in civil rights and the laws of the land. When that mother’s story conjured fear in me, I comforted myself by mouthing from the First Amendment: “The right to petition the government peaceably for a redress of grievances.”

Most of us who marched should have been safe. Mostly, we felt safe, but only because of the tradition and the laws of the land. Something curdled under the milky surface of our democracy’s latest yield. Read More