goes from Moscow to Constantinople

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I supports the creation of a new ecclesiastical jurisdiction on Lithuanian soil: it will grant autonomy to the Lithuanian Orthodox who no longer want to depend on the Moscow Patriarchate. The fact marks an analogy with the Ukrainian autocephalous Church founded in 2018. A response to Patriarch Kirill’s support for Putin’s war against Ukraine.

Moscow () – Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I visited Vilnius and supported the idea of ​​forming a new Orthodox ecclesiastical jurisdiction in Lithuania, dependent on the Patriarchate of Constantinople – an analogy with the Ukrainian autocephalous Church created in 2018. The declaration accompanied the signing of a closer cooperation agreement with the Lithuanian government, together with the local prime minister, Ingrida Šimonite.

In this case, it would be a less definitive structure, an “exarchate” that would allow the Lithuanian Orthodox to act with relative autonomy, since they no longer want to depend on Moscow. Since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the positions of the Orthodox of the Baltic country have been clearly against Moscow and the war justifications of Patriarch Kirill.

Until now, the Metropolitan of Vilnius, Innokentij (Vasil’ev), wavered between secession from Moscow and submission to the patriarchate: in fact, he had submitted a request for a change of status, in order to obtain greater autonomy as a Muscovite exarchate. , or even autocephaly while remaining in communion with the patriarchy. The Russian synod deferred the decision, opting to discuss it at the next local council of the entire Patriarchal Church.

Some Lithuanian Orthodox priests did not want to wait for such procedures and disassociated themselves from the metropolis. As a consequence, they were reduced to the lay state by Innokentij, but Bartholomew welcomed them back as Constantinopolitan priests, hence the need to establish a Vilna exarchate for them. The five officially reinstated priests, to be followed by others, are Fathers Vladimir Seljavko, Vitaljus Motskus, Vitalis Dauparas, Gintaras Sungajla and Georgij Ananiev – of mixed Russian-Lithuanian ethnicity.

The Ecumenical Patriarch assured: “We support priests and faithful who do not accept Moscow’s positions.” Bartholomew also declared that “the Russian Orthodox Church shares the responsibility for the war” along with the leaders of the Moscow state, especially for “the appalling kidnapping of children”, and for this reason any inter-religious dialogue must “focus on ways to oppose patriarchy of Moscow”.

In addition, according to the “peer” primacy of Orthodoxy, the new exarchate would “restore historical justice”, since it dates back to the metropolis of Lithuania that existed between the 12th and 14th centuries. At the time of the Tatar-Mongol invasion, some principalities of Kievan Rus took refuge under the protection of the principality of Vilna, which gave rise to the kingdom of Lithuania and Poland, where there was a Russian Orthodox jurisdiction dependent on Constantinople. In some phases of the turbulent history of those centuries, the metropolitan of Vilnius came to temporarily hold the title of kyiv, the mother city that was destroyed by the Tatars of that time.

Commenting on Bartholomew’s words, Šimonite stressed that they are “natural and very human”. After the aggression against Ukraine, an action that was supported by the Moscow patriarchate, “you cannot remain in conflict with your own conscience, being tied to Russia.” In any case, he said, “it is a decision of the Constantinopolitan Mother Church, in which we have no intention of interfering.”

Šimonite and Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauséda met with Bartolomé. It is worth mentioning that the two Lithuanian officials have no intention of following the example of former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, who had taken the ecclesiastical issue into his own hands, turning it into a symbol of national politics by obtaining Orthodox autocephaly in a break with the Church. from Moscow.

The current Ukrainian Head of State, Volodymyr Zelenskyj, also avoids getting too involved in ecclesiastical tirades: he did not want to receive the members of the UPZ Synod of the Orthodox Church to address the question of permanence in the Kiev Lavra. On the contrary, he chose to leave the matter in the hands of the competent state bodies.