All these accusations of Patriarch Bartholomew are connected, first of all, with self-justification. He just wants to justify his actions when he went the way of not overcoming, healing the schism, but legalizing it, says Metropolitan Borysplisky and Brovarskiy Anthony in the videoproject “Faces”.
“I am now surprised at some of the statements of Patriarch Bartholomew, because quite recently he said completely different things. For example, at a meeting with members of the Holy Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in 2018, he stated that the Mother Church would never hurt the daughter Church.
He also directly said that everyone who claims to prepare a tomos for autocephaly is enemies of the Church of Constantinople. All this was told to us in plain text. And now we are told that we did not do anything. We have studied, we have always said that we are open for dialogue in order to unite Ukrainian Orthodox Christians. Indeed, any sane person, any believer, especially a patriot of his Fatherland, realizes that a split is harmful.
It is not the norm when the Orthodox not only do not understand each other, but when there is enmity between them. How many so-called The Kiev Patriarchate seized churches, how many beatings there were and what is being repeated now. At the moment, what happened in the 90s is happening. Only the scale is different. And we waited patiently for (they) to come to their senses. As in the parable of the prodigal son: when a person leaves the truth, he must come to his senses. Then there is the opportunity to return and ask for forgiveness. And we said that we are for church unity, but only on the basis of church canons. Those rules and those norms that have always been respected. And they preserved the Church as the Church of Christ. But then (the schismatics) told us – “we will look for another medicine.” We, in turn, did not assume that this is not a medicine, it is poison. A poison that does not bring the unity of the church not only in Ukraine, but is also the subject of the division of the entire Orthodox world,” said Metropolitan Anthony.