Head of the Greek Church commemorates Epiphany for the first time

Archbishop Ieronymos II of Athens and All Greece recognized Sergey Dumenko as the primate of the Church

During the liturgy in Athens, the head of the Greek Orthodox Church, Archbishop Ieronymos read out the name of Sergei Petrovich Dumenko (Epiphany) among the names of primates of the Local Churches, reports the “Orthodoxia.info” resource.

Thus, the head of the Greek Orthodox Church completed the process of recognizing the religious structure of the OCU as the Church.

We recall that on October 12, 2019, at a meeting of the Council of Hierarchs of the GOC, a decision was made to recognize the OCU. On October 29, the OCU announced that they received a missive from Archbishop Ieronymos, which is part of the recognition procedure.

The UOC DECR called this decision “a big mistake that harms both Orthodoxy in Ukraine and pan-Orthodox unity”, as well as “a knife in the back of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which has suffered from church schism for all years and continues to suffer from schismatics today, defending the canonical order in the Church."

The decision to recognize the OCO caused an ambiguous reaction among the hierarchs of the Church of Greece: some bishops refuse to recognize this structure and consider members of the OCU to be schismatics who lack grace. Two bishops took the initiative to convene the Pan-Orthodox Council, even without the participation of Patriarch Bartholomew.

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