ROC Filaret suggested to be called “Patriarch of all Africa and of the Galaxy”
MOSCOW, 19 Jul — RIA Novosti. The head of the press service of the Patriarch of Moscow and all Russia Alexander Volkov has commented on statements of the former head of the Kyiv Patriarchate Filaret, who began to call himself the Patriarch of Kyiv and all Rus — Ukraine.
“These dissenters declare themselves to anyone — even the Patriarch of all Russia, even though all Africa, even the entire Galaxy. All this is like a circus, nothing else. No sane assessments of all sorts of inappropriate actions can’t be”, — he told radio station “Moscow speaking”.
The document in which Filaret was designated a new title, previously published as a Facebook archdeacon Andrei Kuraev.
The Russian Orthodox Church defrocked Filaret was deprived of in 1992, after he announced the creation of the “Ukrainian Orthodox Church Kiev Patriarchate,” and five years later betrayed him anathema. The Synod of the Patriarchate of Constantinople restored him to his Church fellowship in October of last year.
Any of the Kyivan Patriarchate does not exist — non-canonical UOC-KP and the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church joined the new Church structure created at the end of the “unification Council”, which was held in Kiev in December. The head of the new “local Church” became a Metropolitan Epiphany (Dumenko), it is Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew presented the Tomos of autocephaly.
Tomos significantly affects the independence of the “new Church” and actually makes it dependent on Constantinople. In the ROC this “autocephaly” was called “dummy,” and the day of the signing of the Tomos — tragic in the history of the Ecumenical Orthodoxy.