The Ecumenical Patriarchate, the primus inter pares of the world’s Christian Orthodox Churches, on Tuesday responded to the previous day’s highly contemptuous claims by the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service’s (SVR).
Among others, Russia’s intelligence service asserted that the Istanbul-based Ecumenical Patriarch and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I were close to “local nationalists and neo-Nazis” in a bid to lure Churches in the Baltic states from the Moscow Patriarchate’s ecclesiastical jurisdiction.
In an announcement posted on its website, the Ecumenical Patriarchate stressed that the “…the Mother Church of Constantinople – which is also the Mother Church of the Russian (Orthodox) Church – expresses its deepest sorrow over the latest Russian attack against His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, launched this time by state agencies of the country (Russia). Since 2018, when the Ecumenical Patriarchate decided to grant autocephaly (independence) to the Church of Ukraine, the Mother Church has refrained from commenting on the countless similar attacks that have come from both ecclesiastical and political centers and figures in Russia. It continues to do so today.
“Such imaginative scenarios, fake news, insults and fabricated information of all kinds from propagandists do not discourage the Ecumenical Patriarchate from continuing its ministry and ecumenical mission.”
The highly offensive language, posted by the intelligence service’s press bureau, were a continuation of Moscow’s wrath against the Ecumenical Patriarchate and Bartholomew I over the recognition (autocephaly) of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) in January 2019.
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