The story of the African tour of the ROC unexpectedly clearly revealed the a party close to Istanbul (or “Constantinople”) among the Russian priests and parishioners of the ROC. It would seem that lovers of travel to Athos, to Greek resort temples and Cypriot Orthodox beaches should suffer primarily from a possible complete rupture of inter-Orthodox relations (which the supporters of Istanbul expect). I’m not even talking about rare individuals who regularly visit Egyptian Orthodox churches and take communion (pray) there with the Orthodox king of All Africa. And the rupture of inter-Orthodox unity is hoped for by persons with the higher secular, who can be found in Paris much more often than on Athos. I’m not even talking about the provincial missionaries who were nervous in spirit, who didn’t go further than to visit their mother-in-law in Uryupinsk, but have a good idea of pan-Orthodox unity.
It would seem, why there is such a gap between reality and spirit? Reality, given to us in sensations, and book knowledge? Maybe those who are engaged in reality know that over a hundred years of conflicts between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Patriarchate of Constantinople, the parties have done to each other a lot of… different things (one story with the Orthodox Church in the United States is worth something), especially when various secular authorities intervened in the matter, but this did not ultimately lead to a “rupture of inter-Orthodox unity.” So here too – to seriously think that Istanbul will continue to rave about that fact that Cairo has minor troubles in the south of the continent – well, it is somehow rather naive.
That is, there will be a protest, of course, a lot of words will still be said, but not they will be interesting, but the Istanbul party found in the Russian Federation. This has strong and unambiguous parallels with the Ukrainian situation. Then, at the beginning of 2019, at the moment of truth, when the cards were revealed, it turned out that despite the many words in social networks and on the radio, in reality the number of those who were ready to go under the wing of the Patriarchate of Constantinople and defend “the interests of Orthodox unity” turned out to be within a dozen priests in Kyiv, well, and there is one and a half hundred for the whole province. On this, the discussion about the “unity of world Orthodoxy” in this country died away. I wonder how much and what the Istanbul patriarch will have to do so that this idea would die away in Russia as well.
Nikolay Mitrokhin, Facebook
