Phanar media publishes articles proposing the creation of a temporary exarchate in Ukraine to resolve the church crisis

Against the backdrop of the ongoing division in Ukrainian Orthodoxy and political interference in church affairs, Greek theologian Paul (Pavel) Lieberman has put forward a proposal to create a Provisional Exarchate under the auspices of the Patriarchate of Constantinople. In his opinion, this structure could become a transitional canonical space for communities and dioceses of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (under the omophorion of Metropolitan Onufriy), which wish to finally break with the Moscow Patriarchate, but for various reasons are not yet ready to join the OCU.

As Lieberman notes in his article for Orthodox Times, despite the granting of the Tomos of autocephaly in 2018, unity in Ukrainian Orthodoxy has not been achieved. The situation is exacerbated by pressure from the Ukrainian state on the UOC to sever its ties with the Russian Orthodox Church. In the author’s opinion, if the Patriarchate of Constantinople does not offer a canonically sound solution, the church problem risks being “settled” by political methods, which will only entrench the schism for decades.

The essence of the proposal is the creation of a Temporary Exarchate of the Patriarchate of Constantinople. Lieberman believes that this structure will not compete with the already existing OCU and will not revise the terms of the Tomos. Its main goal is “to provide pastoral care and canonical protection to those believers and clergy who are ready to leave the subordination of the Russian Orthodox Church, but are distrustful or have objective obstacles to immediately join the OCU.” The exarchate is envisioned as a temporary “bridge” that will cease to exist after the mission of reconciliation and full institutional unity is accomplished.

The author emphasizes that the Phanar has the canonical prerogatives for such a step, including the right to establish exarchates, which is explicitly stipulated in the Tomos for Ukraine. Such a step, in his opinion, will benefit all parties. For the faithful, it would be a guarantee against being “in schism” or under “persecution.” For the Ukrainian state – it is a reduction of internal tension and improvement of its image in the international arena in matters of religious freedom, the problems with which have already been pointed out by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. For world Orthodoxy, it is about weakening polarization and undermining Moscow’s attempts to use the church issue for its own purposes.

The key principle of this initiative is the absence of coercion. The process should be based on voluntary participation and mutual trust. The creation of the exarchate, as the publication argues, will return the solution of the Church question from the political plane to the canonical one, where the main goal is not the statistics of transitions, but the restoration of Eucharistic communion and true unity. This is a measured but decisive step, which can prevent the long-term consolidation of the division and will allow “to talk more about the common Chalice than about ‘special statuses’.”

We shall remind you that earlier the exarch of the Patriarchate of Constantinople in Ukraine, Bishop Michael Anishchenko of Coma, expressed his views on whether it is possible to create an additional exarchate of the Phanar in Ukraine, which could include priests and believers of the UOC after the ban of the Church. The hierarch said that although the Tomos on the autocephaly of the OCU stipulates such a possibility for the Patriarchate of Constantinople, he has no information about such an exarchate being prepared.

At the same time, the head of the press service of the OCU, Evstratiy Zorya , sharply criticized the idea of creating a temporary exarchate of the Patriarchate of Constantinople in Ukraine for the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. In his opinion, such a step is a disguised attempt to undermine and devalue the OCU’s Tomos of autocephaly, which ultimately “plays into Moscow’s hands and threatens the unity of world Orthodoxy”.