“The main intrigue is the Romanian Church”: a religious scholar speculated which Local Churches might recognize the OCU

Religious scholar and OCU lobbyist Alexander Brodetsky shared his thoughts on which Local Churches are likely to recognize the OCU in the near future. According to Brodetsky, the Romanian Patriarchate and the Albanian Church may be the next Churches to recognize the OCU. At the same time, the religious scholar acknowledges that there are Patriarchates that are not yet ready to join the Ukrainian schism. He spoke about this in an interview with the publication Glavkom.

«The Serbian Church will definitely not do this, because its patriarch communicated with Putin in April, calling him the ‘trump card of Orthodoxy’ and the guardian of values. The Jerusalem Church will most likely not do so either, because it is completely dependent on subsidies from Moscow. The Bulgarian Church will definitely not do so, with its current patriarch still quite young. It is quite possible that the Albanian Church will be the fifth to recognize the OCU, because it is distant from political processes. As for the Polish Church, anything is possible. But the main intrigue for us now is the Romanian Church, which, in principle, is actively signaling that it is ready to recognize the OCU. However, it insists that Romanian parishes in Ukraine should belong to the jurisdiction of the Romanian Church. In principle, this is not prohibited by any Ukrainian laws. However, this issue is controversial both for the OCU and the Ecumenical Patriarch regarding the extraterritoriality of jurisdictions,» — said the OCU lobbyist.