Orthodox patriarch signs tomos granting canonical status to Ukrainian church

Bartholomew I, the ecumenical patriarch of the Orthodox
Christian Church, signed on Jan. 5 the tomos, or ecclesiastical document,
establishing the canonical, autocephalous Orthodox Church of Ukraine. The
ceremony occurred in the Patriarchal Church of St. George in Istanbul and was
attended by Ukraine’s political and church leadership, including President
Petro Poroshenko, former President Viktor Yushchenko, Parliamentary Speaker
Andriy Parubiy and Metropolitan Epiphanius of the newly created church. The
next morning, the tomos was officially granted to Metropolitan Epiphanius and
delivered to St. Sophia’s Cathedral in Kyiv for display at the Julian calendar
Christmas liturgy on Jan. 7.

Legislation will be submitted to parliament to
establish the legal procedure for churches of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Moscow
Patriarchate to gradually join the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, said on Jan. 5
Andriy Parubiy, the parliamentary speaker, as reported by the pravda.com.ua
news site. “This step, as with receiving the tomos, will enable the transition
to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine to grow into a great wave, when all
Ukrainians from various corners of Ukraine will join the Ukrainian church and
become Ukrainian church faithful,” he said. Already more than 40 Moscow
Patriarchate parishes have joined the new church, he said, adding that he
expects provocations by the Russian government as more join the wave. Any
violence will be exploited by Russian mass media, he said.

The Jan. 5 signing of the tomos violated the canons of
the Orthodox Christian Church, said the same day Aleksandr Volkov, the press
secretary of the Russian Orthodox Church, as reported by the tass.ru news site.
In doing so, Patriarch Bartholomew “completely cut himself off from world
Orthodoxy by entering schism,” he said. “The signing of the tomos is vile from
a canonical viewpoint and tragic for Bartholomew and his followers, who signed
their spiritual capitulation today.”

Zenon Zawada: The national
campaign for parishes to transition to the new church is coinciding with the
presidential election campaign, a maneuver aimed at maximizing the president’s
otherwise weak poll ratings. Any conflicts, particularly those violent, that
result will be exploited not only by the Kremlin, but also by the Poroshenko
campaign to emotionally motivate his electoral base in voting for him in March.
Because provocations can work to the advantage of either side (depending on how
they’re staged and manipulated), we expect they will be kept to a minimum.

So far, poll figures indicate that the church’s
creation hasn’t given Poroshenko much of a boost in support. We expect the
transition phase in the coming months will also provide a minimal boost, with
violent incidents possibly hurting his support, depending on the context. At
the same time, the church’s creation secured a solid part of Poroshenko’s core
electorate of pro-Western, nationally conscious Ukrainians, preventing them
from fleeing to other candidates.

As for Ukraine’s religious situation, the country now
has two of its largest churches not recognizing each other’s legitimacy, which
is a dangerous situation. We expect the most conversions to the newly created
church to occur among parishes in the west-central regions, which are
Western-oriented and nationally conscious. We expect the majority of parishes in
the southeastern regions to remain in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Moscow
Patriarchate, regardless of what it’s called (recently approved legislation requires they be renamed Russian
Orthodox Church in Ukraine). So the church’s creation could intensify Ukraine’s
east-west divide rather than unifying the country, which Russia will be eager
to exploit in the coming years to split the country.