A union between the Patriarchate of Constantinople and the Roman Catholic Church – the union of churches while the Orthodox denies its doctrine – is not excluded. This opinion was expressed in an interview with TASS by the chairman of the department for external church relations of the Moscow Patriarchate, Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk.

According to him, the Orthodox-Catholic dialogue, which is chaired by Rome and Constantinople, “turned into a deception” because of the latter’s desire to promote the idea of ​​”artificially inflating the primacy of the Patriarchate of Constantinople.” “From the Orthodox side, Constantinople is trying to promote such a model of church structure, substantiating it theologically, which has never existed in the Orthodox Church,” the hierarch noted and added that in this way “under the guise of Orthodox theology, some new concept is presented in this dialogue.” with which the ROC cannot agree.

The metropolitan reminded that the precedent of union between Constantinople and Rome had already taken place more than once, the last time in the middle of the 15th century.

For more than 1,000 years, there have been a lot of theological differences between Orthodox and Catholics, many of which relate to the foundations of the doctrine, and therefore do not allow a compromise to be reached. According to Metropolitan Hilarion, the Russian Orthodox Church does not consider the option of union – when the Orthodox rituals are preserved and “outwardly everything remains the same,” but the doctrine is completely replaced by the Catholic one.