Alexandrian and Polish Churches call to avoid conflict due to SLC issue

Patriarch Theodore II of Alexandria and All Africa and Metropolitan Sawa of Warsaw and All Poland

Patriarch Theodore II of Alexandria and All Africa and Metropolitan Sawa of Warsaw and All Poland appealed to do the utmost to avoid conflict over this issue, reports Romfea.

"We, the Heads of two Local Churches – who meet on the Polish territory and are conscious for the responsibility for the life of the Holy Orthodoxy in the contemporary world, its peace, unity and maintaining the dogmatic and canonical order, facing the experience that the Orthodoxy in Ukraine lives nowadays – in the spirit of brotherly life, we appeal to all on whom depends the elimination of the church misunderstandings regarding the acquisition of autocephaly by the Ukrainian Church: please, do whatever is within your might to stave off the conflict concerning the question in order to install the church order on the Ukrainian territory," reads the appeal.

The archpastors stressed: "Celebrating the Divine Liturgy on the feast of the Nativity of the Most Holy Virgin Mary, we pray for the unity and peace of the Ukrainian nation. At the same time, we send our brotherly greetings to the Heads of the Local Orthodox Churches and the whole plenitude of the Holy Orthodoxy."

As the UOJ reported, earlier Metropolitan of Warsaw and all Poland Sawa expressed support to His Beatitude Metropolitan Onufry of Kiev and All Ukraine and urged the believers of the UOC to be courageous, not to surrender, and to unite around their Primate.

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