Synod of ROC breaks Eucharistic communion with Ecumenical Patriarchate

At the meeting of the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church, held on October 15, 2018 in Minsk, its participants adopted the Statement of the Holy Synod, the website of the Russian Orthodox Church reports.

The members of the Holy Synod considered it impossible to remain in the Eucharistic communion with the Constantinople Patriarchate.

The statement reads, “The acceptance of schismatics and the persons anathematized by another Local Church with all their hierarchs and clergymen into the communion, the encroachment on the canonical territories of the others, an attempt to renounce their own historical decisions and obligations, all of this places the Patriarchate of Constantinople beyond the canonical field and, to our grief, makes it impossible for us to continue the eucharistic communion with its hierarchs, clergy and laity.”

“From now on, until the Constantinople Patriarchate rejects the anti-canonical decisions adopted by it, all clergymen of the Russian Orthodox Church cannot concelebrate with the clergy of the Church of Constantinople, and the laymen are prohibited to participate in the sacraments carried out in its churches,” the document states.