The ugly attempt of Constantinople to introduce papal power in the Orthodox Church led to a split in world Orthodoxy, said Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, chairman of the Department for External Church Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate, writes the website of the DECR ROC.

As Vladyka noted, the main dividing issue remains the question of the Pope’s authority in the Church: “We cannot accept such a model of church organization, where there will be one person, considered infallible, who will have power over all Church Councils. We say that the Church is Catholic and Apostolic. By conciliarity we mean what in the secular language could be called the collective mind of the Church: in every Local Church, the Patriarch is accountable to the Council of Bishops, and not the Council of Bishops is accountable to the Patriarch.”

“We are ready to discuss disagreements within the framework of the Orthodox-Catholic dialogue, but not such a dialogue, which, in fact, turns into manipulation,” said Metropolitan Hilarion, stating: “What Constantinople has been doing in the Orthodox-Catholic dialogue in recent years was an attempt to manipulate the Local Orthodox Churches in order to recognize a model under which the Patriarch of Constantinople would receive some kind of exclusive papal privileges,” he said.