On January 28, 2022, the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church, having read the communiqué of the Holy Synod of the Patriarchate of Alexandria published on January 12, 2022, in connection with the establishment of the Patriarchal Exarchate of Africa by the Russian Orthodox Church, adopted a statement calling on Patriarch Theodore and the hierarchs of the Church of Alexandria to step back from supporting the Ukrainian schism and return to the canonical path in order to preserve the unity of Holy Orthodoxy. The Patriarchia.ru informs about it.
According to the statement, the members of the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church got acquainted with the communiqué of the Holy Synod of the Patriarchate of Alexandria published on January 12, 2022, dedicated to the establishment of the Patriarchal Exarchate of Africa by the Russian Orthodox Church.
The Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church considers it necessary to respond to the attempts made in the document to distort the true reasons and circumstances for the formation of the Exarchate.
The decision of the Moscow Patriarchate is explained in the communique by “the fact of recognition of the autocephaly of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church” by His Beatitude Patriarch Theodore of Alexandria.
Such a statement is based on a deliberately false thesis, since the Ukrainian Orthodox Church both existed and still exists as an independent part of the Russian Orthodox Church in its administration. The Ukrainian Church did not ask for and did not receive any autocephaly. On the contrary, she resolutely rejected the process of granting the so-called tomos of autocephaly, imposed on her from the outside and supported by the then state authorities of the country and schismatics. This has been repeatedly and publicly stated in the official statements of the Council of Bishops and the Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, in the speeches of its archpastors, clergy, monastics and laity, the vast majority of whom wished and wish to maintain unity with the Moscow Patriarchate.
The so-called autocephaly was granted by the Patriarchate of Constantinople not to the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church — the largest confession in Ukraine, which currently has 108 bishops, 12,381 parishes, 12,513 clergymen, 260 monasteries and 4,630 monastics — but to a group of schismatics who have fallen away from it and continue to enmity against her. It was from these persons, who did not have the legal consecration and grace of the priesthood, and from their like-minded people that the Patriarchate of Constantinople, contrary to the canons, formed the “autocephalous church”. And it was with this schismatic, graceless structure that His Beatitude Patriarch Theodore of Alexandria entered into communion.
The Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church notes with sorrow the distortion of Orthodox ecclesiology, manifested in the implementation of the scenario of the so-called Ukrainian autocephaly. However, this distortion was not allowed by the Russian Church, as stated in the communiqué of the Synod of Alexandria. It is found in the acts of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, which illegally invaded Ukraine, as well as in the statements of its high representatives. Attempts to approve the first Primate according to the diptych as “the first without equals” in the Orthodox Church, who supposedly has the exclusive right to grant and withdraw autocephaly at his own discretion, to tear away parts of them from the Local Churches, to unilaterally revoke documents more than three hundred years old, to single-handedly cancel judicial the decisions of the Councils of Bishops of other autocephalous Churches to arbitrarily “restore” persons who have never held holy rank are an undeniable departure from the patristic teaching about the Church and the centuries-old Orthodox Tradition.
Members of the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church remember the speeches of the Primates of the Orthodox Church of Alexandria in support of the canonical Church in Ukraine in the bosom of the Moscow Patriarchate, including the statements of His Beatitude Patriarch Theodore, which he repeatedly made in the past until recently. As His Beatitude testified in an interview in 2016, he has always taken “the position that the Ukrainian Church is an integral part of the Russian Orthodox Church.” In 2018, while visiting Odessa, the Primate of the Patriarchate of Alexandria called on the faithful to be faithful to “the canonical Church of Ukraine, headed by His Beatitude Metropolitan Onufry.”
However, on November 8, 2019, His Beatitude Patriarch Theodore unexpectedly announced the recognition of the Ukrainian schismatic group, began commemorating its leader at divine services, and on August 13, 2021 entered into direct Eucharistic communion with him.
As is known, the recognition by His Beatitude Patriarch Theodore of the schismatic structure in Ukraine caused rejection, including within the Alexandrian Orthodox Church itself. Many of its clergy publicly spoke out in defense of the canonical Ukrainian Church, declared their disagreement with the clearly illegal decision of their Primate, and did not want to be in canonical submission to the one who embarked on the path of schism.
For two years the Russian Church did not respond to the appeals of the African clergy that came to her, but patiently waited for His Beatitude Patriarch Theodore to change his mind.
However, during this time, His Beatitude did not limit himself to commemorating the head of one of the Ukrainian schismatic groups in diptychs of the Orthodox Primates, but entered into Eucharistic communion with him and other “hierarchs” of this structure. These mournful events convinced the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church of the need to respond to the appeals received and to form, in these exceptional circumstances, the Patriarchal Exarchate in Africa.
Such a difficult decision, taken in the situation of recognition by the Patriarch of Alexandria of the Ukrainian schismatics, is in no way an expression of a claim to the canonical territory of the ancient Church of Alexandria, but pursues the only goal – to give canonical protection to those Orthodox clerics of Africa who do not want to participate in the lawless legitimization of the schism in Ukraine.
We call on His Beatitude Patriarch Theodore II of Alexandria and the archpastors of the Most Holy Church of Alexandria to stop supporting the Ukrainian schism and return to the canonical path in order to preserve the unity of Holy Orthodoxy.
