Constantinople Acts Outside Jurisdiction In Row Around Ukraine's Church - Bulgarian Church

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 16th December, 2018) Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople has been acting outside his jurisdiction by pledging to grant autocephaly to the newly-created Ukrainian Orthodox church, Metropolitan Daniil (Nikolov) of Vidin, a member of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church's Holy Synod, said on Sunday.

The Ukrainian authorities and the new church want to get a tomos from the Constantinople patriarch on autocephaly. On Saturday, the Constantinople Patriarchate's press service told Sputnik that Patriarch Bartholomew invited the elected head of Ukraine's new church to visit Istanbul to receive the tomos on the feast day of the Epiphany Day on January 6.

"His Holiness Patriarch Bartholomew has been the head of the Constantinople Patriarchate since 1991, and he always recognized that the UOC [Ukrainian Orthodox Church] is under the jurisdiction of the Moscow Patriarchate. Now, all of a sudden, he claims that the Metropolis of Kiev has never been under the full jurisdiction of the Moscow Patriarchate," the metropolitan said in an interview, published on the Bulgarian Orthodox Church's website.

When asked whether the Constantinople Patriarch had thereby acted out of his jurisdiction, Metropolitan Daniil replied: "We definitely believe so.

"

"The dispute in Ukraine is not just a dispute between two local Orthodox churches, it affects the entire Orthodox church and inter-Orthodox relations. It violates the thousand-year-old canon law of the church, one of the basic principles of which is the principle of church jurisdiction. These restrictions are clearly defined and universally recognized," he added.

The statement follows the "unification council," which was held in Kiev on Saturday, at which Epiphany Dumenko, Metropolitan of Pereyaslavsky and Bila Tserkva of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Kyiv Patriarchate (UOC-KP), was elected primate of the new church. According to Ukrainian media, only two bishops of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate (UOC-MP) participated in the council. The UOC-MP refused to participate in this event.

The Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) said the canonical meaning of the "council" in Kiev was insignificant, and the possibility of recognizing Epiphany in the Orthodox world was a task "hardly possible to fulfill."