GRECO-ROMAN STRUGGLE OF VIKTOR YUSHCHENKO
by Aleksei Shmyrev
NG-religiia, 3 June 2009
Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko continues to meet with world religious leaders. On 20 May he met with Patriarch of Constantinople Bartholomew in Istanbul and on 1 June he had an audience with Pope Benedict XVI during a visit to Rome. As in the past, Yushchenko's main idea is the creation of a united local Ukrainian Orthodox church. The third president of Ukraine wants to go down in history as the unifier of Orthodoxy. However in the past year the visit by Patriarch Bartholomew to Kiev did not produce any results in this matter. It seems, he himself has somewhat cooled to the ecclesiastical initiative of Yushchenko. In any case, this time they discussed only the possible opening of an annex of the patriarchate of Constantinople in Kiev. At present Patriarch Bartholomew's interests in Ukraine are limited to this.
However, the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs let it be known that it does not approve of the idea of creating a representation of the Constantinople patriarchate in Kiev. "Such initiatives on the part of Ukraine do not have legal bases," the newspaper "Aksham" wrote regarding the outcome of the meeting of Yushchenko and Patriarch Bartholomew, citing Turkish diplomatic circles. "Without the permission of Turkey, such a proposal cannot be undertaken by the patriarchate." In the cited article there also was reference to the conditions of the Lausanne treaty of 1923 according to which the Constantinople patriarch is the head of the Greek Orthodox community of the city of Istanbul and northing more. He does not have the right to call himself the Ecumenical Patriarch and to conduct diplomatic activity without permission of the Turkish government.
And so the ecclesiastical politics of the Ukrainian president have clashed with the stern position of Turkey on the question of the status of the patriarch of Constantinople. When he did not get what he wanted in Istanbul, Yushchenko undertook a visit to Rome where he met with Benedict XVI. To speak with the pope of Rome about Orthodox unity (and Yushchenko promised to touch upon this topic) was at least strange. In addition, the present pontificate, in contrast with its predecessor, is not planning to make visits to countries of the former Soviet Union, preferring to maintain good relations with the Russian Orthodox church. The divisions among Orthodox in Ukraine do not bother the Vatican very much, in contrast to the extremely sharp contradictions between the Ukrainian Roman Catholics and Greek Catholics (Uniates) who are under the jurisdiction of the Roman pope.
The Uniate problem, it seems, is the most unmanageable problem in the business of creating a united Ukrainian Orthodox church. After all, Greek Catholics also call themselves Orthodox. At the same time they are as much the expression of Ukrainian identity as the representatives of the other national churches. Briefly stated, without the participation or at least the agreement of Greek Catholics, the unity of the Ukrainian Orthodox church would not be complete. But is such consent possible after four centuries of division (the Brest Union was proclaimed in 1596)? The leader of Ukrainian Greek Catholics, Cardinal Liubomir Guzar, prefers to answer this question with another question. "There may be unity," he stated in his last interview with the magazine "Ukrainskii Tizhden," "But will we exist when it is attained? Unity is also a gift from God. But it seems to me that everybody reckons to get it on his own personal conditions. Nobody wants to change; on the contrary, everybody says 'let the whole world change, but not I!'"
At the same time the head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic church has been unable in a year to gain from the Vatican recognition of the title of patriarch which he has already been using, de facto, for a long time. And while Moscow persistently does not recognize the patriarchal title for the former Orthodox exarch of Ukraine, Filaret Denisenko, Rome also persistently does not wish to give such a title to Cardinal Guzar. And what does Yushchenko do in this situation? Judging by everything, he is already convinced of the fruitlessness of attempting to legalize the Kievan patriarchate headed by Filaret; he will not be recognized by either Moscow or Constantinople. And bishops have abandoned him, leading away whole dioceses.
There remains another variant: to try to legalize the Greek Catholic Ukrainian patriarchate headed by Cardinal Guzar. So by hook or by crook Kiev could have its own legal patriarch! (tr. by PDS, posted 3 June 2009)
Source: http://www.stetson.edu/~psteeves/relnews/0906a.html#03