Mass media: Emmanuel of France had no idea he concelebrated with dissenters
The Ecumenical Patriarchate believes that given a large number of hierarchs and priests, it is impossible to know who is who.
The head of the Ecumenical Patriarchate’s Public Relations Office said that Metropolitan Emmanuel did not know that the priest from the unrecognized "Montenegrin Church" participated in the liturgy in Kiev. This is reported by the French publication Orthodoxie.com.
The publication, with reference to the UOJ, reminds that on May 26, at St. Michael’s Monastery, during the celebration of the heavenly patron day, the head of the OCU Epiphany, Metropolitan Emmanuel of France, amid other bishops and priests, concelebrated with archimandrite Bojan Bojović from the unrecognized “Montenegrin Church”.
In response to this, the office of the Ecumenical Patriarchate gave an official comment to the publication Orthodoxie.com stating that it was an “incident” and that Metropolitan Emmanuel could not know who attended the liturgy, in which 100 clergymen took part.
Phanar stressed that the Ecumenical Patriarchate is in canonical unity with the Serbian Orthodox Church and recognizes only the jurisdiction of the latter in the territory of Montenegro.
According to the publication, the head of the Public Relations Office of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, Nikolaos Papachristou, is sure that “given such a large number of bishops and priests, it is impossible to know who is who” and therefore, “the Patriarchate of Constantinople is not to blame for such a failure”.
Recall that the UOJ previously wrote that, commenting on the situation, the official website of the OCU published a statement saying that in the past it had contacts with representatives of the “Montenegrin Church”, but upon granting of the Tomos it maintains contacts only with Churches being recognized by Constantinople.
