The Holy Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate has designated Patriarch of Kyiv Filaret and Archbishop of Ukraine Makariy, Makarius, the primates of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church – Kyiv Patriarchate (UOC-KP) and the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (UAOC), as canonical hierarchs.
This decision was reported by the Ukrainian religious news portal Risu, with reference to the famous Greek edition Orthodoxia.info.
UNIAN has learnt from own sources that the Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate decided to reinstate the canonical status of the Primates of the UOC-KP Filaret (Denysenko) and the UAOC Makariy, or Macarius (Maletych).
This decision was taken after both primates had sent their requests to the Ecumenical Patriarch. Yet, the Greek edition said, no details and conditions of such a step are known.
As UNIAN reported earlier, a meeting of the Synod of the Constantinople Patriarchate on October 9 began in Istanbul, which was set to approve a tomos on autocephaly of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.
The three-day meeting is being held behind closed doors, while its agenda has never been announced officially.
UNIAN memo. President Petro Poroshenko announced at a meeting with leaders of parliamentary factions on April 17 that he and the hierarchs of the UOC-KP and the UAOC had decided to formally appeal to Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I with a request for autocephaly of the Orthodox Church in Ukraine and asked the parliament to support the appeal.
On April 19, the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine's parliament, adopted a resolution supporting the president's appeal, which was adopted on April 22, to the Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate.
On September 3, Poroshenko said that the Ecumenical Patriarchate had decided to give independent states the right to create a local church without taking into account the position of Moscow.
