ROC surprised with response of UGCC Primate to Havana Declaration

Moscow Patriarchate’s representative Metropolitan Hilarion responded to Primate of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church Patriarch Sviatoslav’s criticism of the joint declaration of Pope Francis and the Primate of the Russian Orthodox Church Kirill, RIA Novosti reports.

“The authors of the Joint Declaration text and its last edition are personally Pope Francis and Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Kirill,” assures Hilarion, who acted as main organizer of the meeting of the Pope and Patriarch on the Orthodox side.

He called “indecent” the statements of Patriarch Sviatoslav that the joint declaration of the Pope and the Patriarch was written by a "weak team" consisting of Metropolitan Hilarion and his counterpart in the Roman Catholic Church - Cardinal Kurt Koch.

“You know, it is like an icon of St. John the Evangelist, next to him his disciple Prochorus is sitting and the Apostle John is dictating him the Apocalypse text. We are not saying that the Apocalypse is a text written by Prochorus... The basis of the text of the declaration is made up of the ideas which were literally dictated by the Pope and the Patriarch. Our business with Cardinal Koch was only to compose this text. And again, the last edition was theirs, not ours,” the Metropolitan said.

In addition, Hilarion called the “insults” of Patriarch Kirill a politically motivated job.

“I can understand why he offends our Patriarch – it is a specific politically motivated job, and we know who the customer is, and what the purposes of these insulting remarks are. But when the head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church speaks like this about his own Pope, it certainly is a very big surprise and astonishment,” said the representative of the Russian Orthodox Church.