Council of Greek Church to consider Ukrainian issue on Saturday, the OCU speaker

On October 12, Saturday, the Extraordinary Council of Bishops of the Church of Greece is set to consider the Ukrainian question. On October 7, 2019, at the beginning of the meeting of the Synod, His Beatitude Archbishop Jerome II of Athens and all Greece signed a relevant decree.

Speaker of the OCU, Archbishop Yevstratiy (Zorya) wrote about it on his Facebook page.

“As you know, this week a regular meeting of the Council of hierarchs of the Church of Greece will begin in Athens and will end on October 11. The list of topics for the meeting does not include any related to Ukraine, so the Moscow-backed media got the move to report that the Council of the Greek Church will not consider the matter of recognition of the autocephaly of the OCU.

As is standard for such media outlets, they rushed to wishful thinking. Indeed, at the regular session of the Council of hierarchs, the issue will not be considered. But immediately the next day, the head of the Council, the Primate of the Church of Greece, His Beatitude Archbishop Jerome, convenes an extraordinary meeting, having chosen this form for the sake of observing certain procedural traditions," the Hierarch wrote.

According to him, the "Ukrainian issue" has already been heard by the Permanent Synod of the Church of Greece, which took note of the reports of the two Synodal commissions on the issue of Ukrainian Church autocephaly.

"Both reports were positive. Following the hearings, the Synod stated that the Ecumenical Patriarch has the right to proclaim autocephaly of local Churches (while the ROC insists that it is necessary to do this only with the consent of all local Churches, meaning, in fact, the impossibility to proclaim autocephaly without the consent of the Moscow Patriarchate).

Also, the Synod stated the customary right of the Archbishop of Athens to resolve issues related to the emergence of a new Autocephalous Church — that is, the way and order of entering into relations with it as a Sister Church, inscribing of the Primate's name for commemoration in the Diptych, and so on.

It should be expected that the issue will receive similar support from the Council of Bishops of the Church of Greece, " Archbishop Yevstratiy (Zorya) said.