The Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church decided earlier in the day that Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia will cease commemoration of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople, but full communion between the churches will not be suspended yet.
The move is a response to the Constantinople Patriarchate appointing its exarchs to Ukraine as "part of preparation to grant autocephaly to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church."
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"The war of the Patriarchate of Constantinople against the Moscow one continues for almost a hundred years… Today history repeats itself. Again, as in the time of Patriarch Tikhon, they send their exarchs to us, supposedly to heal the split, but in fact to legitimize it, with a view for the subsequent split of the Ukrainian Church from the Moscow Patriarchate. The same logic is traced: the use of a difficult situation not for the brotherly support, but for weakening the Russian Church by detaching certain parts from it," Metropolitan Hilarion wrote on Facebook.
In April, Poroshenko said that Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople was launching the procedures required to establish the Autocephalous Church in Ukraine. The Russian Orthodox Church condemned the move, saying that the anti-canonical measures in Ukraine threatened to split the Orthodoxy.
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