YEREVAN, September 18. /TASS/. Armenian Apostolic Church hopes for an earliest possible resolution of the situation around the granting of autocephaly to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church by the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, Reverend Vagram Melikian, the head of the chancellery at the Holy Etchmiadzin told TASS.
"We hope the Church of Christ will find it possible to preclude a new split and will take guidance from the Holy Spirit to tap the ways of ironing out the current situation in the spirit of love, solidarity and mutual understanding," Rev Melikian said.
"Such is the prayerful request of the Armenian Apostolic Church." The situation in the Orthodox Christian community in Ukraine is highly complicated, as the country has three organizations referring to themselves as Ukrainian Orthodox Churches, but only one of them, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church reporting to Moscow Patriarchate enjoys the status of a canonical Church.
Ukrainian authorities have been striving to set up a Ukrainian Church disconnected from Moscow Patriarchate ever since the former Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, one of the fifteen constituent republics of the former USSR, declared itself an independent country in 1991. In April 2018, President Pyotr Poroshenko addressed the Ecumenical Patriarch, Bartholomew I, with a request to grant autocephaly to Ukraine. The Verkhovna Rada, the national parliament, supported the appeal, as did the two schismatic religious organizations - the Ukrainian Orthodox Church reporting to the so-called Kiev Patriarchate and the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, which is a successor to an early 20th century movement of nationalistic Ukrainian clerics.
The canonical Church reporting to Moscow Patriarchate did not send any appeals to the Ecumenical Patriarchate.
On September 7, Synod of the Church of Constantinople appointed two exarchs to Ukraine in the format of preparations for the granting of autocephaly to the Ukrainian Church. The appointees and other officials at the Ecumenical Patriarchate gave the assurances that the move aimed to bring in unity to Ukrainian Orthodoxy. They admitted the situation had many knotty aspects and was highly delicate.
The Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church reacted with indignation to Patriarch Bartholomew’s decision on Ukraine. It ruled last Friday to stop mentioning him during liturgies in the Russian Church and to ban co-officiating with the hierarch of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. Metropolitan Hilarion, the chief of Moscow Patriarchate’s department for external Church relations said this did not mean a full severing of relations with the Church of Constantinople and therefore the rank-and-file believers could continue taking communion at the churches reporting to the Ecumenical Patriarchate