After bestowal of Tomos on UOC, Moscow to lose Belarus as well

The local status of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, as soon as it is recognized, will cast doubt on the canonical affiliation with the Moscow Patriarchate of the territory of Belarus as well. It opens the way to the creation, at the moment, of emergence of the purely canonical grounds for autocephaly of Belarusian Orthodoxy.

This was posted by Konstantin Matviyenko, an expert of the Strategic Consulting Corporation “Gardarika” on Radio Liberty site, ZIK reports.

“Public attention to the problem of the Orthodox Church's acquisition of the status of Local Government in Ukraine is first of all attracted by politicians. By Russian politicians – because for their state from time immemorial Orthodoxy was an instrument of external expansion and absorption of the surrounding countries. The Ukrainian ones - because the Russian expansion under the pretext of the “one faith” had to rely on it from time immemorial,” said the expert.

According to him, the transformation of Orthodoxy into an indispensable component of the Russian national idea has made Great Russian chauvinists, both from political and religious circles its hostages.

“By appropriating St Volodymyr's Baptism and even the Prophecy of St Andrew the First-Called on the slopes of the Dnieper, where Kyiv later shone, the Russian “collectors of land” are panicked for fear of losing the grounds of the ancient, apostolic origin of their Church they have created by their own hands, which will surely happen when the Ukrainian Church is canonically recognized as separate from the Russian one,” the expert believes.

“The autocephalous status of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church means for Russia a radical reduction of its own status – both in the age of origin and thein  number of believers. All claims to the leading role of the Moscow Patriarchate in the world Orthodoxy will have to be forgotten. Such a fiasco knocks out one of the “bearing pillars” of the Russian national idea. Therefore, the Kremlin is desperately seeking to terminate the process of granting to Ukrainian Orthodoxy the local status, which has been already initiated by the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew,” says Kostyantyn Matviyenko.