OCU Spokesman: ROC strives to become Orthodox Vatican

The Russian Orthodox Church strives to become the "second Vatican" and a global religious and political center, that is why it tries to disrupt the authority of the Tomos of Autocephaly of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine.

Archbishop of the OCU, Yevstratiy Zorya, posted about it on his Facebook page, Obozrevatel reports. He noted that Moscow's goal to reserve the leader role for the ROC "has remained unchanged since Stalin's time."

The Archbishop added that the Church in Russia functions "relying on Putin's machine of propaganda and bribery." "Before the Council on Crete, Moscow had planned to assemble its own "Council". It was going to represent the Church not by the delegations, but hierarchs. Therefore, a number of Churches will clearly ignore the Council of Moscow – but the hierarchs encouraged by MP will. This will give grounds to refer to their own Council as Pan-Orthodox and to respond to the protests of Constantinople that "our Council is not worse than yours, but we had several times more hierarchs, so ours is the right and respected one," Archbishop Zorya believes.

In his opinion, such a plan of the Russian Federation was figured out by the Phanar which became the final argument in favor of the Tomos for the Ukrainian Church "since the previous tactics of diplomacy and concessions towards Moscow did not work, and they were hardly going to wait until the MP "strangles Constantinople in a brotherly embrace," said the Hierarch.

He thinks the ROC wants to neutralize the Tomos as such at any cost, as well as, most importantly, the right of the Ecumenical Patriarch to confer it. "All this is disguised as a beautiful wrapping of the idea of "the need for Pan-Orthodox consent" to a new autocephaly," explains Zorya.