The Russian Orthodox Church said that Bartholomew I violated Eucharistic unity and brought the Orthodox-Catholic dialogue to a standstill
Metropolitan Hilarion, chairman of the Department for External Church Relations of the Russian Orthodox Church, expressed his opinion on this issue in an interview with the Rossiya-24 TV channel, according to the ROC website.
"We cannot rule out the fact that Constantinople will unilaterally conclude some agreements with the Catholic Church or with any other church. Moreover, the Patriarch of Constantinople has recently expressed himself in the spirit that he has some special prerogatives that we never knew about before ... Similar views have already led to sad events in Ukraine, when Patriarch Bartholomew unilaterally, against the will of local churches, carried out an anti-canonical action that provoked a split in the Orthodox world," Hilarion said.
Moscow called the problem of orthodox-Catholic dialogue the fact that "in relations with the Roman Catholic Church, the patriarch of Constantinople positions himself as the head of the entire Orthodox Church" and accused Patriarch Bartholomew of "violating Eucharistic unity."
"Patriarch Bartholomew's anti-canonical steps have disrupted Eucharistic unity... The Patriarch of Constantinople is trying to use the Orthodox-Catholic dialogue to inflate his primacy in the Orthodox Church ... and turn it into a kind of papal power, as it exists in the Roman Catholic Church. Orthodoxy has never had a single supreme head for all Orthodox Churches," Metropolitan Hilarion said.
He pointed out that this causes disagreement in the local Orthodox Churches, has already led to a schism and was the reason that "the Orthodox-Catholic dialogue has actually reached an impasse."
