Message of the Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church
The short message the council on Crete addressed to the Orthodox people and to all people of good will at its close. It gives the dates of the meeting and sums up its decisions in twelve points.
The message is the council’s own summary of its work, shorter and plainer than the Encyclical of the Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church. Its preamble dates the meeting to the week of Pentecost, 18 to 26 June 2016, and says that the council was convoked by the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I by the common will of the primates of the autocephalous churches. Point 1 says that the Orthodox churches are not a federation but one church, and records the proposal that the council become a regular institution meeting every seven or ten years.
The text speaks for the churches that took part. It does not mention that four of the fourteen autocephalous churches were absent; see the Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church.
Cited in
- June 2016, firm date