Trouble looms in Eastern Orthodoxy as Pan-Orthodox Council approaches

Chiqui Guyjoco Wednesday, June 15, 2016

Troubles within the Eastern Orthodoxy threaten the historic Pan-Orthodox Council set on Sunday, June 19, in what is to be its first after more than a thousand years.

Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill visits the graves of Russian soldiers who fought in the 1932-1935 Chaco war between Paraguay and Bolivia, at the Recoleta cemetery in Asuncion, February 15, 2016. | REUTERS/JORGE ADORNO

Patriarchs of the Eastern Orthodox Christians have agreed to hold the Holy and Great Council on Pentecost Sunday on the Greek island of Crete. The Council took 55 years in the making and would be the first since year 787 before the Great Schism between the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church in 1054.

However, disunity and rivalry among Orthodox sister churches are posing threats on the coming Council. In the latest string of churches pulling out from the meeting, the Russian Orthodox Church announced Monday, June 13 in a televised statement that it will not be attending while suggesting to have the Council postponed.

"We have made a decision that we will not be able to take part in the all-Orthodox Synod if other churches do not go," said Metropolitan Hilarion, Moscow's Patriarchate bishop for the department of external church relations, as reported by Associated Press.

Orthodox churches of Bulgaria, Antioch, Serbia, and Georgia had earlier announced their non-participation to the council citing differing issues and complaints.

According to the National Catholic Register, these non-participating churches are "close" to the influential Russian Orthodox Church which has the most number of people and money.

"Kirill plainly intends, in fact, to strip Bartholomew of his exclusive status as the top symbolic representative of Orthodoxy in the world," wrote Sandro Magister, an Italian analyst observing a major rivalry between Moscow's Patriarch Kirill and Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople.

Although the churches recognize their own leadership, Istanbul's Bartholomew is considered "first among equals" in the Orthodox world.

However, Magister believes that what happens at the Council is largely a showdown of influence between the two Orthodox leaders.

Before Russia's announcement, Constantinople has previously issued that while the Ecumenical Patriarchate has expressed "surprise and wonder" to the decisions of the sister churches who backed out from the meeting, the Council will still push through.

The Eastern Orthodoxy is made up of 14 autocephalous (self-governing) churches of Albania, Bulgaria, Czech and Slovakia, Georgia, Greece, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Alexandria, Antioch, Constantinople, Cyprus, and Jerusalem.