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Apocalypse Delayed: Patriarch Kirill on Restraining the Antichrist in Ukraine

by Maureen Perrie | български | ქართული | ελληνικά | Română | Русский | Српски

On 20 November 2022, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow celebrated his 76th birthday. At a reception to mark the occasion, held in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow, the Patriarch warned his guests in apocalyptic terms of the current dangers facing Russia and the Russian Orthodox Church. Without explicitly mentioning the war in Ukraine, Kirill called on the Church to play an active part in “the struggle of our Fatherland against global evil” and against “this movement of the Antichrist, which is capable of destroying both the entire world and Russia.” All the forces of the Antichrist, he claimed, would be directed against Russia, because the Russia of today was the “restraining force” (uderzhivuaiushchii) that was mentioned in Scripture in relation to the appearance of the Antichrist in the world. 

Speaking to the audience at his birthday reception that mostly comprised hierarchs of the Orthodox Church, Kirill evidently did not feel the need to explain the Biblical concept of the “restraining force.” Several months earlier, however, in a sermon he preached in the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour on 7 April, Kirill had called for prayers to be said for peace in Ukraine and for the preservation of the unity of the Orthodox Church. Why, he asked, had external forces attacked the “Russian land”? The Bible, he explained by way of an answer, contains a reference to a certain force that restrains the coming of the Antichrist into the world. It does not say what this force is: some think it was the Roman Empire; others believe it is the Church. The latter view is correct, Kirill claimed, but the restraining force is also “the entire pious people of all times and all countries, it is the Orthodox faith which lives and acts in the Orthodox Church.” This, he concluded, is why the enemies of the Church are now attacking its unity.

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International Orthodox Theological Association Conference Opens in Volos, Greece

ελληνικά

Conference participants at Saints Constantine and Helena Church

On January 11, 2023, the second Mega-Conference of the International Orthodox Theological Association (IOTA) held its formal opening at the Volos Academy for Theological Studies.

His Eminence Metropolitan Ignatius (Georgakopoulos) of Demetrias presided over Vespers at the Saints Constantine and Helen Church. In his welcome to the conference participants he said he was grateful that each day would begin with prayer, a sign of the ecclesial significance of the conference. Following Vespers the approximately 400 participants traveled to the Academy and filled its Great Hall for the opening ceremony.

There, the audience received a welcome from host Dr. Pantelis Kalaitzidis, Director of the Academy. Dr. Kalaitzidis noted that holding the conference in Volos is a testament to the Academy and the Holy Metropolis of Demetrias’s vision of being an internationally recognized place for encounter and dialogue, and open to scholarly thought. He focused on the incarnational reality of the Gospel and the conference’s theme, “Mission and the Orthodox Church.” He stated that mission cannot be only a theoretical or historical concern, but must be a contemporary one, since “God’s revelation takes place in history.” Kalaitzidis said: “A fleshless mission theology which refuses to converse with the wider social and cultural realities of its time is inconceivable. A mission theology that does not assume the flesh of its time is equally as inconceivable, just as it is inconceivable for the church to be insular, refusing to be drawn out of itself to meet the world and history, to evangelize and transform.” 

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The Ecumenical Patriarchate and the “Barbarian Lands” Theory

by Matthew Namee | български | ქართული | ελληνικά | Română | Русский | Српски

Patriarch Meletios

One of the keystone prerogatives claimed by the Ecumenical Patriarchate is its jurisdiction over the so-called “diaspora”—regions not included within the geographic boundaries of the other Autocephalous Churches. She insists that this exclusive extraterritorial jurisdiction is rooted in Canon 28 of Chalcedon which states:

[O]nly the metropolitans of the Pontian, Asian, and Thracian dioceses, as well as the bishops of the aforementioned dioceses among barbarians are ordained by the aforementioned most holy throne of the most Holy Church of Constantinople.

This phrase—“the bishops of the aforementioned dioceses among barbarians”—is interpreted by supporters of the EP’s claims to refer to “those territories beyond the geographical boundaries of the other Local (autocephalous) Churches.”

But that’s not what the canon explicitly says; it’s an interpretation. On its face, the canon seems to refer only to bishops who belong to the dioceses of Pontus, Asia, and Thrace, who are ministering among certain barbarians. The standard canonical commentators—Zonaras, Balsamon, Aristenos—all interpret the phrase literally, referring to specific barbarian groups who were adjacent to Pontus, Asia, and Thrace. At the turn of the 19th century, St Nikodemos repeats this interpretation in the Pedalion. The modern theory is nowhere to be found.

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Which Orthodox Church in Ukraine is the Largest?

by Thomas Bremer

Drawing of Ukrainian church
Image Credit: iStock.com/L_Kramer

From the moment the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) was granted autocephaly by the Ecumenical Patriarch early in 2019, it has competed with the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) not only over canonicity but also about the number of parishes and the number of faithful. Each claims to be the only canonical church in the country, and also the largest, but numerous transfers of parishes from the jurisdiction of the UOC to that of the OCU (and a few the other way around), the situation of the war—and thus the preoccupation of the authorities and the faithful alike with more urgent problems—make it almost impossible to arrive at reliable data. On September 13, 2022, the head of the State Service for Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Conscience, Olena Bohdan, publicly described the UOC as being the largest religious “network” in the country. A few days earlier, a leaked document showed the administration of the Ukrainian Security Service for the city and the district of Kyiv as saying that the transfers of faithful from the UOC to the OCU present a threat for national security (since parish meetings of those preparing transfers can lead to open conflicts, and since “transfers can foment interconfessional hatred”). The Synod of the OCU reacted on October 18 with a statement claiming that state authorities hinder the transfer of parishes from the UOC, “which has only 4% public support.”

The question of which church is larger remains open, however. There are two ways to count: by number of parishes or by number of faithful. Regarding parishes, the Ukrainian authorities have very thorough statistics. Every religious community that wants to exist legally in Ukraine has to register with the aforementioned State Service and to provide data regularly about numbers of parishes, clergy, training institutions, etc. We have these statistics for many years, enabling us to see the dynamics of the growth (or decline) of religious communities. To interpret these numbers, several elements are important:

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