The Ecumenical Patriarchate never recognized the canonical anathema that was imposed on the Ukrainian Hetman, Ivan Mazepa, by the Russian Orthodox Church.
The Ecumenical Patriarchate never recognized the canonical anathema that was imposed on the Ukrainian Hetman, Ivan Mazepa, by the Russian Orthodox Church.
The representative of the Ecumenical Patriarchate at the World Council of Churches in Geneva, Archbishop Job (Getcha) of Telmessos said this in in an interview with Glavkom.
According to him, it was imposed on the hetman for political reasons. “Despite the impossibility of imposing the non-canonical anathema on Hetman Mazepa on the part of the Russian Church, the representatives of the Ecumenical Patriarchate did not recognize it, since it was imposed for political motives as a means of political and ideological repression and did not have any religious, theological or canonical grounds,” he said.
Archbishop Job explained that after the first demolition of the Zaporizhia Sich by the Russian troops in 1709, the Ukrainian Cossacks, which passed under the protectorate of the Crimean Khan, returned to the jurisdiction of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, and Mazepa, along with Pylyp Orlyk, were among the first to do so.
“Having emigrated to Bendery, Ivan Mazepa freely confessed to Orthodox priests of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. They consoled him on his deathbed and absolved his sins, and then performed a burial service for him. His body was buried in the Orthodox church of the town of Varnitsa, which was under the jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, and subsequently reburied in the city of Galats on the Dunai River, where in the central cathedral of St. George Monastery the local metropolitan served a burial for the reposed Hetman. This Metropolitan was the hierarch of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. Consequently, we can say that Ivan Mazepa died as a faithful of the Mother Church, the Ecumenical Patriarchate!” the Hierarch of the Ecumenical Patriarchate emphasized.