Communiqué of the Holy and Sacred Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, 11 October 2018

The synod met under Patriarch Bartholomew I from 9 to 11 October 2018, with the two exarchs it had sent to Ukraine present. The communiqué lists five numbered decisions: to proceed to the granting of autocephaly; to re-establish the patriarch’s stavropegion in Kyiv; to accept the appeals of Filaret Denisenko, Makariy Maletych and their followers and restore them to their rank and to communion; to revoke the synodal letter of 1686; and to appeal to all sides to avoid the seizure of churches and every act of violence.

It gives the decisions and, briefly, the grounds Constantinople claims for them: the patriarch’s prerogative to hear appeals from all the autocephalous churches, and the view that the letter of 1686 gave Moscow only a right “through oikonomia”, that is by dispensation, to ordain the metropolitan of Kyiv. See Constantinople Grants Autocephaly to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine.