Submitted by Nadia Bazuk…
On June 3, the head of the Greek American Archdiocese of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, Archbishop Elpidophoros, took part in a Black Lives Matter protest in New York against racism and discrimination. In his Facebook post, Elpidophoros noted that in this way he expressed solidarity with his “fellow sisters and brothers whose rights have been sorely abused”.
As some of our readers already know, there is a crisis in the Eastern Orthodox Church that has not been seen since the Great Schism of 1054.
Submitted by Tamar Lomidze…
In relation to our previously published piece about Governor Andrew Cuomo signing abortion into the New York State Constitution, we noted that at the time of the article’s writing, no entities within the Orthodox Church in any jurisdiction issued any kind of statement condemning this law.
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.
OrthoChristian.com reported a recent development in the ongoing effort to throw the Russian Orthodox Church out of Ukraine by techniques used under Communism.
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.
This piece is reprinted almost entirely from its original posting on orthochristian.com. We hope it offers a clear perspective that shared across the Orthodox Christian world regarding the recent moves by the Patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew I, in regards to the legitimization of two canonically schismatic church communities in Ukraine.
The attack on the Eastern Orthodox Church, brought about by the US State Department and its proxies in Constantinople and Ukraine, is continuing. On October 20, 2018, the illegitimate “Kyiv (Kiev) Patriarchate”, led by Filaret Denisenko who is calling himself “Patriarch Filaret”, had a synodal meeting in which it changed the commemoration title of the leader of the church to include the Kyiv Caves and Pochaev Lavras.
US Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom Sam Brownback has visited Ukraine. On Sept. 11 he was received by President Poroshenko. The ambassador seized the opportunity to offer assurances that Washington would continue to support the idea of an independent Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (UAOC), despite the fact that that institution is currently under the jurisdiction of the Patriarchate of Moscow.
