Priests of the UOC MP have collected 430 signatures for the international ecclesiastical tribunal over Patriarch Kirill of the Russian Orthodox Church
This was reported to Radio Liberty by Archpriest Andriy Pinchuk, a clergyman of the Diocese of Dnipropetrovsk, UOC-MP, who was one of the initiators of the collection.
The priests' signatures were collected under the appeal of the clergy to the Primates of the Eastern Churches regarding the trial of Patriarch Kirill.
According to Fr Andriy Pinchuk, now the appeal, translated into Greek, will be submitted for consideration to the Council of Primates of the Churches of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem and Cyprus which has jurisdiction over Patriarch Kirill.
"They must first be accepted for consideration, and then make a decision on the appointment of a meeting. But I do not know about the timing," the priest said.
According to him, the English version will be submitted to the Primates of other Orthodox Churches for review. The appeal, translated into Russian, will be sent to Patriarch Kirill "to understand what he has done in Ukraine and what the Ukrainian clergy accuse him of," says Fr. Andriy Pinchuk.
"The main accusation is to support the spread of the doctrine of the "Russian World", which, in our opinion, is a kind of heresy of ethnophyletism. This is when something National is put over Christian universalism when Christ and God's truth are not visible behind the smoke of "national ideas," the priest said.
He noted that in history there are precedents regarding the deprivation of church leaders of dignity precisely because of such a procedure. 450 years ago in Russia, it was the Council of Primates that defrocked Patriarch Nikon.