The most serious schism within the Eastern Orthodox Church since the Great Schism of 1054 continues this year, with the excommunication of the Constantinople Patriarch, Bartholomew I, following his “rehabilitation” of two schismatic hierarchs on October 11th of this year. The local Orthodox Churches already had a reaction before this ever happened, and that response has largely deepened now.
The pressure in Ukraine kept ratcheting up over the last few days, with a big revelation today that Patriarch Bartholomew now considers Metropolitan Onuphy “uncanonical.” This news was published on 6 December by a hierarch of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church (running under the Moscow Patriarchate).
This assessment marks a complete 180-degree turn by the leader of the Orthodox Patriarchate of Constantinople, and it further embitters the split that has developed to quite a major row between this church’s leadership and the Moscow Patriarchate.
When Patriarch Bartholomew lifted the anathemas on Filaret Denisenko and Makary and pledged his efforts to create an autocephalous (independent) Orthodox Church in Ukraine, he boldly proclaimed that everyone would go along with his decision.
News broke a few days ago, on Nov 19th, and has spread across the Orthodox world, that the United States paid Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I some $25 million dollars to foment the disruption of the Orthodox Church in Ukraine. James Jatras reported on this, and his report has been republished on RT and across several independent news websites.
