The decision was announced on the evening of 13 June, after the Patriarchates of Antioch, Bulgaria and Georgia pulled out: Moscow has now made the same request as these Churches. The Russians are refusing to attend if the Council is not postponed as requested. But the assembly is to go ahead as scheduled.
In order to take place on the scheduled dates – which all Orthodox Churches unanimously agreed upon –, if it goes ahead, the Council in Crete, which is due to take place from 19 to 26 June, will be attended by 10 out of the 14 existing Orthodox Churches. The Russian Church and the Patriarch of Moscow, Kirill – whose jurisdiction extends to over half of the Orthodox world’s faithful - will not be attending. The Extraordinary Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church reached this decision at a meeting held after some other Churches pulled out in recent days. In doing so, the Russian Church joins these other Orthodox Churches in their request for the Council to be postponed. If it is not, then the Russians will not take part in the Council meetings.
“All Churches must participate in the pan-Orthodox Council,” stated Metropolitan Alfeyev, chairman of the Department of External Church Relations, “only in this case will the decisions taken by the Council be valid”. At the same time, the metropolitan sought to play things down a bit, saying: “The situation is not catastrophic, it is a regular situation”.
Moscow’s intention to postpone the Council, the first pan-Orthodox Council to be held in more than a thousand years and an event which has been over 50 years in the making. After Sunday 12 June’s liturgy, Metropolitan Hilarion said “it is best to postpone” the event rather than “do things in a hurry”.
“In the 55 years it has taken to organise the pan-Orthodox Council we have talked about the fact that this needs to be a unifying factor for the Church, in any case it should not cause divisions,” Hilarion underlined. “If we deem preparations not to be complete and that some problems have not yet been resolved, it is better to postpone this Council than to do things in haste and above all in the absence of many local Churches. There cannot be a pan-Orthodox Council if one or more local Churches is not present,” he warned.
The first Church to announce it was not attending the Council, was the Bulgarian one, followed by the Serbian Church – which then did a U-turn – and the Patriarchate of Antioch. The latter decided to pull out because of an age-old dispute between it and the Patriarchate of Jerusalem regarding territorial jurisdiction over Qatar. The Georgian Church talked about “obstacles” to its own participation, while the opposition of the monks on Mount Athos is well known. The disagreement is over the contents of some documents, which the Council will have to discuss and promulgate, including the one on the relationship between the Orthodox Churches and the other Christian denominations. Critics have asked for amendments to be made, as well as for the postponement of the Council. This has met with the opposition of ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, which is responsible for the organisation of the event in Crete.
In actual fact, the decision of the above-mentioned Churches to pull out, came as a surprise given that, as is traditional in some Orthodox Churches, all decisions relating to the Council, dates, procedures and texts to be discussed were always taken unanimously by Church leaders or representatives. Why was the event schedule initially approved by everyone only to then be called into question? What is it that made Churches reconsider, portraying Orthodoxy as a world with many internal divisions? The Patriarchate of Moscow may have played a significant role in this.
The Russian Church, which is numerically, economically and structurally stronger, also has a strong national identity and iron-strong ties with the Russian presidency. The same can be said of the other Churches, which are now in two minds about attending the Council given their solid relations with the Russian Church. It could be that Moscow did not wish to give too much importance to the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew’s role. The Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople has a primacy of honour over all Orthodoxy but is weak in terms of numbers and more importantly represents a minority Church in the big Muslim country that is modern-day Turkey. But the Patriarchate of Constantinople’s strength lies in this very weakness: it was bright figures like Athenagoras in the 1950s and 1960s who gave an extraordinary impulse to ecumenical path of Christians, a legacy which has continued under Bartholomew’s leadership. Under Bartholomew’s leadership, the Patriarchate has managed to speak to the world and establish itself as a recognised moral authority.
On Sunday, Hilarion also said that the decision of the Russian Church was “very important and the fate of the Orthodox Church will depend on it to a large extent: we will either live in peace and harmony with the other local Churches or we will face conflicts, disputes and arguments”. “We know that the Holy Spirit,” he concluded, “has always intervened in the history of the Church and will continue to do so and we believe that the Holy Spirit will guide us in making the right decision”. In the end, the Russian Orthodox Church decided not to attend. Conflicts, disputes and reconsiderations won. Bartholomew meanwhile, had hoped that all doubts, disputes and disagreements would be aired during the Council debate.
What will happen next remains to be seen. Constantinople has said that the meeting in Crete on 19 June will be going ahead: since everyone unanimously agreed on it, only Patriarch Bartholomew can decide to defer it. It will mark the start of a discussion and of work, the start of a process and of a long journey, in the hope that the Churches which have decided not to take part, may change their minds in the future.
