Archbishop of Cyprus sees no problem in recognizing the OCU

At the invitation of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, the head of the Church of Cyprus, Archbishop Chrysostomos, arrived in Istanbul. It is expected that tomorrow they will hold a joint Liturgy at the diptych Ecumenical Patriarchate mentions the name of the head of the OCU, Metropolitan Eifaniy of Kyiv and all Ukraine.

According to Cerkvarium which cites Romfea, on the eve of the service, Chrysostom delivered the thanksgiving speech to the Ecumenical Patriarch, in which, among other things, he raised the issue of recognition of the OCU. He said that the real problem of Orthodoxy for him, as for the Ecumenical Patriarch, is not the recognition of the OCU.

"I could recognize them yesterday, today, and tomorrow. There is no problem for me. The problem for me is the problem of Orthodoxy. Unfortunately, some people do not understand this, and those primates who did not go to the pan-Orthodox Council do not know and cannot understand it."

As for the right of the Ecumenical Patriarch to grant autocephaly, Chrysostom noted that he tried to explain to some primates that they should not send their bishops to foreign canonical territories just because their citizens are there because 300 thousand Cypriots abroad are under the jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarchate.

In addition, the Primate of Cyprus said that he had been proposing for quite a while to start preparing for the next session of the pan-Orthodox Council. In this case, it is necessary to determine the topics for discussion, and the primates of Churches who respect the Tomos about autocephaly, which the Ecumenical Patriarch previously issued to them, should act for the benefit of Orthodoxy.