The letter that we received from Patriarch Alexy II is our Tomos,” - the UOC hierarch

The hierarch of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, Metropolitan Alexy of Voznesensk and Pervomaisk, said that the Letter of Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow and All Russia is the very document that makes the UOC the most independent of all religious organizations in Ukraine. The bishop is convinced that, compared to the OCU, the UOC has much more rights and believes that the Patriarchate of Constantinople should recognize the independence of the UOC and the decision of the Council in Feofaniya of May 27, 2022. He said this in an interview with Glavkom.

“In Ukraine, of all the Orthodox jurisdictions, it is our Church that has the greatest independence. We do not need to coordinate any issues with either Moscow or Constantinople. We open our parishes in Europe, make myrrh (rather than taking it from Moscow or Istanbul), canonize saints, create new dioceses, and elect bishops. We are de facto an independent church. Once again, I remind you that the Letter we received from Patriarch Alexy II is our Tomos. Back in 1993, in a letter to the then Minister of Justice of Ukraine Onopenko, Patriarch Alexy called the founding document for the UOC a Tomos and confirmed that according to it, the Russian Orthodox Church has no claims to the property of the UOC in Ukraine. It would be good if Constantinople, for its part, confirmed that the UOC is an independent Church and recognized the decisions of the UOC Council in Feofaniya,” – the hierarch said.

Earlier, the hierarch of the UOC, Metropolitan Theodosius of Cherkasy and Kaniv, appealed to the head of the Church of Constantinople, Patriarch Bartholomew, to consider the Ukrainian church issue at the Pan-Orthodox level. The bishop is convinced that the recognition of Ukrainian schismatics and the granting of the Tomos of autocephaly to them was a fatal mistake that could split world Orthodoxy.