RFE/RL | Newsline
5 September 2000
THE STRUGGLE TO ESTABLISH
THE WORLD'S LARGEST ORTHODOX CHURCH
By Taras Kuzio
During the synod of the
Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) in Moscow from 18-20 August, Patriarch of Moscow
and All Russia Aleksii II denounced calls to "confine the Church within
the framework of the Russian Federation." The State Duma backed the ROC's
geopolitical pretensions within the CIS by allocating 6 million rubles
($216,000) to the ROC in Ukraine this year.
In early August, Ukrainian
President Leonid Kuchma sent a letter to his Russian counterpart, Vladimir
Putin, asking Russia to return mosaics and frescoes from the Mykhaylivskyy
Golden- Domed Cathedral in Kyiv. So far, he has received no response. The
cathedral was built from 1108-1113 and destroyed on the orders of Josef Stalin
in 1934. Some of the surviving treasures were looted by the Nazis but returned
in the late Soviet era. The cathedral was rebuilt from 1996-1999 with Kyiv city
funds and is now under the jurisdiction of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Kyiv
Patriarch (UOC-KP).
The reconstruction of the
cathedral has been seen as direct competition to the rebuilding of the
Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow, backed by Mayor Yurii Luzhkov.
"Kommersant-Daily" deemed the Ukrainian cathedral's construction
politically motivated because "Ukraine is pretending to be the successor
to the whole tradition of Kyiv Rus." The ROC stands to lose the most from
the unification of Ukraine's three Orthodox Churches into an independent
(autocephalous) Church because Kyiv would resume its historical leadership
among eastern Slavs as the direct descendant of Kyiv Rus and the Kyiv
Metropolitanate (the city of Moscow was founded 600 years after Kyiv).
The ROC is also concerned
about maintaining its influence. In the former USSR, two-thirds of ROC parishes
were in Ukraine; today half of ROC parishes remain within Ukraine's borders.
According to the Oxford-based Keston College, the ROC has a greater number of
parishes outside the Russian Federation and within the former USSR (more than
9,000) than within the Russian Federation itself (7,000). In Ukraine, whose
population is three times smaller than Russia's, there are two times as many
Orthodox parishes as in the Russian Federation (14,000). This makes the
Ukrainian Orthodox Churches potentially the largest Orthodox community of
believers in the world.
Of the 14,000 Orthodox
parishes in Ukraine, 8, 000 come under the jurisdiction of the Moscow Patriarch
and the remaining 6,000 fall under that of the UOC-KP and the Ukrainian
Autocephalous Orthodox Church (UAOC). The combined total of nearly 15,000 ROC
parishes within the former USSR gives the ROC the clout to back its historical
claim of leadership within the Orthodox world as the "Third Rome."
The "Second Rome" (Constantinople, known by its Turkish name of
Istanbul) is therefore subordinate to itself. Ukraine, with its large Orthodox
community, is key to the struggle between the ROC and the Patriarch of
Constantinople for leadership and influence over the world's Orthodox
believers.
Of particular concern to
the ROC is Constantinople Patriarch Bartholomew I's declaration in June that
Ukraine lies within its canonical territory. That claim, which is backed by the
Greek, Romanian, Bulgarian, and Georgian Orthodox Churches, is based on
Constantinople's non- recognition of the forcible transfer of the Kyiv Orthodox
Metropolitanate to Moscow in 1686, making the ROC's control over Ukraine
uncanonical in the eyes of Constantinople.
In 1924, Constantinople
Patriarch Grygorii revived the Kyiv Metropolitanate by creating the Polish
Autocephalous Orthodox Church (PAOC) at a time when 6 million Ukrainians lived
in Poland. The UOC-KP and UAOC claim to be canonical descendants of both the
Kyiv Metropolitanate and the PAOC and thus back Constantinople's jurisdiction
over Ukraine. Ukrainian Orthodox Churches in North America came under the
Patriarch of Constantinople's jurisdiction in 1995.
The ROC rejects any claims
by Constantinople over Ukraine and describes its two rivals in Ukraine as
"schismatics," demanding that they return to the bosom of the only
"canonical" Church. As in Belarus, the ROC in Ukraine has allies
among the left and pro-Slavic union political groups, and, ironically, its most
ardent supporter is the Communist Party of Ukraine. It is therefore not
surprising that the August Moscow synod refused even to discuss a request by
President Leonid Kuchma, the metropolitan, and all but two of the bishops of
the ROC in Ukraine to grant it autonomy.
Kuchma sees the granting of
autonomy as a step toward the unification of the ROC in Ukraine with the UOC-KP
and UAOC into an autocephalous Orthodox Church. All opinion polls conducted in
Ukraine since 1992 give majority support among Orthodox believers to the
UOC-KP. Confusion among many Orthodox believers is due to the fact that the ROC
in Ukraine was registered as the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) in 1990, even
though it has never possessed any kind of autonomous status and is merely an
exarchate of the ROC. Some 200 of the 1700 Orthodox parishes in Galicia, for
example, belong to the UOC (ROC).
In an interview in
"Tserkalo Tyzhden" in August, Patriarch Filaret of the UOC-KP said he
believes that 60-70 per cent of the ROC in Ukraine would agree to join a united
Ukrainian Orthodox Church. The establishment of such a Church would make
Ukraine home to the largest Orthodox Church in the world, and Constantinople
would have found itself a new ally in its historical struggle with the ROC for
leadership over Orthodox believers. Such a move would also seriously damage the
movement for eastern Slavic union within Ukraine, as the autocephalous wing of
Ukrainian Orthodoxy supports Ukraine's integration into Trans-Atlantic and
European structures. The author is an honorary research fellow at the Canadian
Institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta.
05-09-00