Delegations of the Eastern Orthodox Churches of Jerusalem, Antioch, Romania, and Cyprus arrive in Moscow later Monday to take part in the festivities marking the 1,025 years since the adoption of Eastern Orthodox Christian faith by Kievan Rus.Read the rest here.
The Jerusalem and Cyprian delegations are led by the supreme hierarchs of these Churches - Patriarch Theophilos III and Archbishop Chrysostom, Moscow Patriarchate’s department for external church relations said.
According to the department spokesman, the Reverend Igor Yakimchuk, the top-rank clerics and the accompanying delegations will take part in the festivities that will be held from July 24 through to July 29 in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus at the level of both governments of the three countries and the Church.
The delegations of the Romanian Orthodox Church and the supreme hierarch of the Autocephalous Orthodox Church in America, Metropolitan Tikhon, who arrived in Moscow Sunday, are expected to have meetings with the Patriarch of Moscow and all Russia Kirill I Monday.
Delegations of all the fifteen national Orthodox Churches will take part in the jubilee festivities and eight delegations will be led by the ruling hierarchs of the respective Churches.
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The celebrations in Moscow (July 24) and Kiev (July 27-28) will witness concelebration by 6 Patriarchs (Alexandria, Jerusalem, Moscow, Georgia, Serbia, Bulgaria), three other primates of autocephalous Churches (Cyprus, Poland and OCA) and representatives of the six remaining autocephalous churches (Constantinople, Antioch, Romania, Greece, Albania, Czech and Slovak Church).
The Patriarch of Antioch, according to a statement of Met. Hilarion, could not come only because of the violence in Syria. The Czech and Slovak Church is presently without a primate after the pro-Russian Metropolitan was forced to resign in the wake of slanderous accusations.
That leaves four churches that for some reason did not send their primates to this celebration: Constantinople, Romania, Greece and Albania. Romania's relations with the rest of Orthodoxy have been quite poor lately because of its hyper-phyletist ideology. Albania and Greece have primates who are beholden to Constantinople. Constantinople thinks that Ukraine is its territory but can't do anything about it.
All in all the coming celebrations are set to be a major triumph for canonical Orthodoxy in Ukraine and an assertion of the authority of Patriarch Kirill. The rage of the liberal, Uniat and autocephalist journalists in Ukraine as the celebration nears is palpable. (Try reading RISU's Ukrainian page to see the rage on full display.)
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