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12 October 2018, 19:35Lavrov calls Patriarch Bartholomew's actions on Ukraine as provocation backed by U.S. (updated)
Moscow, October 12, Interfax - Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has described the steps by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople toward granting autocephaly to the church in Ukraine as an act of provocation supported by the United States.
"The Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate is against those provocations that Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople is plotting now with Washington's direct public support," Lavrov said in taking questions from RT France, Paris Match, and Le Figaro.
The Russian Foreign Ministry published fragments of Lavrov's answers on its website.
"This provocation has been designed to make use of two uncanonical schismatic churches in Ukraine (the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kiev Patriarchate and the Ukrainian Autocephalous Church), which have never been recognized by a single Orthodox Church but which, having convened the Holy Synod in Constantinople in the interests of this provocation the other day, Patriarch Bartholomew recognized as canonical and lifted the anathema from the two hierarchs leading these schismatic churches," Lavrov said.
"As concerns church matters, interference in church affairs is banned by the law in Ukraine, in Russia, and, I hope, in any other normal country. But when the U.S. special representative on church relations directly welcomes Patriarch Bartholomew's decision, when Kurt Volker, whose duty is on behalf of the U.S. to facilitate a settlement in Ukraine based on the Minsk Agreements, says what he says about these processes, we have a saying: the thief has a burning hat. The people, who cannot confront us with a single fact confirming their groundless accusations that we meddle in someone's affairs, behave in such a way as if this was normal," he said. |
