Media gets copy of draft Charter of new church

The new Ukrainian Orthodox Church will be led by a Primate with the title Metropolitan of Kyiv.

This is stated in the draft charter of this Church which is at the disposal of Ukrayinska Pravda.

It should be noted that the document received by the editorial board is the initial version of the charter which was approved by the Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate on November 29.

The amendments, which in the last days were made by the joint working group of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Kyiv Patriarchate, the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, representatives of the Moscow Patriarchate and exarchs of the Patriarch of Constantinople, are not taken into account in the published document.

But already from this project it is known that at this stage the head of the new Ukrainian Church will not receive the title of Patriarch, although the Church itself will become autocephalous, that is, independent and equal with other local Churches.

The synod of the new Church, according to the document, should consist of 12 hierarchs. Every half a year, half of the Synod will be rotated, and the term of office of a member of the Synod will be one year.

The head of the Autocephalous Church will always be elected at the Local Council.

The myhrr for the new Church at this stage will be prepared by the Church of Constantinople, but all the other attributes of Church independence are already received now by the Ukrainian Church.