Patriarchal and Synodal Tomos for the Bestowal of the Ecclesiastical Status of Autocephaly to the Orthodox Church in Ukraine

A tomos is the formal act by which a patriarchate grants a church its independence. This one says that it was entered and signed in the register of the church of Constantinople and handed, in identical copies, to the new church’s primate, Epiphanius, and to the president of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko. It gives as its grounds Ukraine’s political independence, more than thirty years of requests from its civil and church leaders, and Constantinople’s duty to care for churches in difficulty, especially those bound to it by canonical ties “such as the historical Metropolis of Kyiv”.

The terms are specific. The primate bears the title Metropolitan of Kyiv and all Ukraine; the church’s jurisdiction is limited to the territory of the Ukrainian state; it ranks after the church of the Czech Lands and Slovakia; it receives the holy chrism from Constantinople and is to refer major questions to the Ecumenical Throne, to which its clergy keep a right of appeal. The document states Constantinople’s view of its own authority. The Moscow Patriarchate had rejected the decision to grant autocephaly, and the claims on which it rests, in October 2018; see Constantinople Grants Autocephaly to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine.