The hierarch of the OCU Dimitriy Rudyuk believes that Filaret Denisenko’s resistance to the tomos received from Istanbul is groundless. He recalls that Filaret “wanted to die as patriarch” and did not accept the prospect of retirement, reports the Detector.

“All these arguments about the world, about foreign parishes, all this has nothing to do with the independence of the church. Everybody knows. And not all myrrh is cooked. But the fact is that the Kiev Metropolitanate always brewed myrrh, even when it was dependent on the Synod, during the synodal period. In Kiev, the Lavra was a world-shop and myrrh was brewed. This is not an attribute of autocephaly.

Miro is not an argument. Foreign parishes are also not an argument. The Patriarch knows very well that those parishes that were in the Kyiv Patriarchate go to the OCU. Negotiations are underway now, but they are insignificant. The status quo will probably remain above them as it is. Constantinople put forward this position, because it is fixed canonically. All foreign ones should belong to the Ecumenical Patriarch, he still considers the Diaspora to be his own. He wants to approve this canonical order,” Rudyuk said.