MOSCOW, December 6. /TASS/. Inter-church relations between the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) and the Orthodox Church in America (OCA) can be a factor in improving Russian-US relations, despite the currnt political environment, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia said at a meeting with OCA’s Primate, Metropolitan Tikhon of All America and Canada, in Moscow’s St. Daniel Stauropegial Monastery.
"Relations between the Moscow Patriarchate and the Orthodox Church in America were not just restored, they were approved canonically. Despite the complex political context of that time, we were able to do something very important, when full communion was restored, and our churches embarked on the path of fraternal cooperation. If we talk about the political context, today it is not the best. However, that does not prevent us from maintaining our unity, sincere love and respect for each other, despite the changing political environment. I do not give up the hope that these inter-church relations can be a factor in improving relations between our countries and peoples," he said.
Patriarch Kirill thanked Metropolitan Tikhon for supporting the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC). "I would also like to thank you for prayers in support of the suffering Ukrainian Orthodox Church, for your appeal to support His Beatitude Metropolitan Onufry and the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church, for the corresponding decision by your church’s Synod. I would like to highlight your principled stance on the non-recognition of the so-called Orthodox Church of Ukraine," he added.
Church crisis in Ukraine
Since the February 2014 coup, Kiev has sought to create an independent church in Ukraine that would sever ties with the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church. In April 2018, Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko wrote a personal letter to Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople asking for autocephaly for the Ukrainian church.
On December 15, 2018, Kiev hosted the so-called ‘unification’ council held under the supervision of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople and brokered by the Ukrainian authorities. The canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church refused to take part in the event, stressing that both the ‘unification council’ and Poroshenko’s newly founded ecclesiastical instituion were illegitimate. Nevertheless, after the council, the Ukrainian president announced the establishment of a new church in the country - the so-called Orthodox Church of Ukraine. The Tomos of Autocephaly (a clerical decree on establishing an independent church) was handed over to its head, Metropolitan Epiphany, on January 6.