The Russian Orthodox Church refused to participate in the Pan-Orthodox Council

The Russian Orthodox Church will not participate in the Pan-Orthodox Council, which was scheduled to be held in the second half of June in Crete.

The reason for this, as follows from the Interfax report, was the refusal of a number of other churches to participate in the cathedral.

“All Churches must participate in the Pan-Orthodox Council, and only in this case the decisions of the Council will be legitimate,” said Metropolitan Hilarion, head of the department for external church relations of the Russian Orthodox Church.

“As some now say: well, they refused - this is their problem, let them not participate, but we will still get together with the composition that will be there, we will make decisions, and they will become mandatory for everyone. It doesn’t happen like that, ” Interfax quotes the metropolitan .

He recalled that in recent days, several local Orthodox churches at once - Bulgarian, Antiochian and Georgian - refused to participate in the Council, and the Serbian Church came out in favor of its transfer. At the same time, the Patriarchate of Constantinople, which is responsible for preparing the forum, rejected the initiative of the Moscow Patriarchate to convene a pre-council meeting, at which it was possible to try to resolve the controversial issues.

Interfax

• Preparations for the Pan-Orthodox Council, in which 15 Orthodox churches are to take part, have been going on since the 1960s. In early June, it became known that the Russian Orthodox Church may refuse to participate in the council due to disagreements with other churches. Subsequently, the Bulgarian, Antioch and Georgian churches refused to participate. *