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The Russian Orthodox Church decided on Monday to break all ties with the Patriarchate of Constantinople, the Orthodox Mother Church, to protest against its decision to create an independent church in Ukraine.
The decision of the hierarchy of the Russian Church prevented all its adherents from taking part in rituals such as communion, baptism and marriage in all the churches controlled by the Patriarchate throughout the world.
"We hope that common sense will prevail, that the patriarch of Constantinople will change his attitude to the reality of the existing church," said Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, head of the country's external relations. Russian church, at the end of a synod held in Minsk (Belarus). .
This decision was another step towards one of the most serious schisms of Christianity for centuries. The move however halted before a full break, with the Russian church having asked leaders of the 12 other independent Orthodox churches to put pressure on Constantinople rather than demanding that they also break with she.
"It sounds like an ultimatum to put the greatest possible pressure on Constantinople," said Alexander Baunov, a senior fellow of the Carnegie Moscow Center. It could work or turn against him, he said, pushing Constantinople to assert his authority by implementing the decision.
Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople, who as an ecumenical patriarch is considered the "first among equals" in religious affairs, took several steps last week for the establishment of an autonomous church in Ukraine. However, he still has to issue a Tomos of Autocephaly, the official order that would create an independent Ukrainian Orthodox church.
These measures included the revocation of a decision of 1686 that effectively put the Ukrainian church under the authority of Moscow. Constantinople claimed that it had simply granted Moscow the right to approve the patriarch in Kyiv and that it had originally granted it, it is governed by the law of the Church to take it back.
Moscow argues that it takes the consent of the Russian church, qualifying the marches as "illegal".
Various churches of the Orthodox faith have broken communion during its nearly 2,000-year history, particularly with regard to the creation of autonomous churches. The Russian church itself broke with Constantinople in 1996 for several months because of the question of control of the church in Estonia before the conclusion of a compromise.
But the stakes are much higher in Ukraine because of the number of faithful in the region and the potential for violence is much greater after more than four years of war between the two countries. There are concerns about violence erupting everywhere, from a historic monastery in downtown Kiev to local parish churches.
The Russian Orthodox Church boasts 150 million followers, or half of the estimated 300 million Orthodox in the world. The approximately 12,000 Ukrainian parishes make up about one-third of all parishes in the Russian Orthodox Church. An independent church would drastically reduce the Russian church and undermine its long-standing claim to rule the whole of orthodoxy because of its size.
The loss of the church in Ukraine would also have political and historical repercussions. Kiev is considered the birthplace of Russian Orthodoxy. More importantly, any split would break the last imperial bond between Moscow and Kiev, burying an effort by President Vladimir V. Putin to restore the empire as much as possible under the banner of the "Russian world".
Russia has accused the United States of manipulating the decision to weaken Moscow. But Putin himself was widely criticized for having unleashed the conflict by sending the Russian army to Ukraine from 2014 onwards. Many faithful in Ukraine do not want their church to respond to the conflict. Moscow hostile.
The confrontation between Moscow and Constantinople puts the rest of the orthodox world in a delicate position, forced to choose between the wealth and power granted to the Russian church by the Kremlin in relation to the centuries of religious tradition represented by the. mother church Istanbul.
