Patriarch of Serbia: We are on the side of canons, including in the Ukrainian issue

On March 2, 2021, His Holiness Patriarch Porfirije of Serbia gave an interview to PTC, Serbia’s central TV channel, in which he spoke in particular about the situation of the world Orthodoxy in connection with the Ukraine problem.

‘We are an autocephalous Church with its own internal order. All the Orthodox Churches are our sister Churches’, he reminded the viewers, ‘and in this case, just as in principle, we are always on the side of canons and on the side of order. We believe that at the present moment, when the point is the actions of the Patriarchate of Constantinople in Ukraine, they have disagreed with the tradition of the Church. In this sense, you can say, if you wish, that we on the side of the Russian Church. In fact, we are on the side order and on the side of canons. And in this case, the Russian Church is actually deprived of her rights’.

The correspondent also wondered whether the Ukrainian situation would become a precedent for church entities in the canonical territory of the Serbian Church to receive autocephaly, for instance, in Macedonia, Montenegro, the Province of Kosovo or Croatia.

‘I am not a prophet but I still hope that that it will never come to the actions similar to those we saw in Ukraine’, His Holiness said, ‘because it has become obvious that it has caused great shocks in the relationships among Local Churches. It will become a lesson that can sober everybody up’.

In his opinion, ‘when problems emerge we should talk and leave it not to our time but to God’s time to restore order’.

DECR Communications Service
with reference to pravoslavie.ru

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Patriarch of Serbia: We are on the side of canons, including in the Ukrainian issue

Patriarch

Department Chairman

Sermons

Patriarch

Department Chairman

Sermons