A matter of life and death: A scenario for lifting the anathema from Filaret has been developed in Kyiv

For the non-canonical “Kyiv Patriarchate” it is vitally important to obtain from the Patriarch of Constantinople Bartholomew the right to autocephaly (tomos) during the life of the anathematized “patriarch” Mikhail “Filaret” Denisenko.

The Kiev weekly “Mirror of the Week” writes about this today.

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“Filaret is becoming more and more impermanent every year, and without him, the chances of the UOC-KP to become the very church that will receive the Tomos and with it canonical recognition are becoming thinner. The UOC-KP may turn out to be the main beneficiary of the Tomos, but only if Patriarch Filaret is still heading it at the time of receiving the Tomos. Therefore, if not Patriarch Filaret, then who? This is, indeed, an alarming question for the church-administrative structure of the UOC-KP. Not only in the UOC-KP, but also in other Orthodox churches in Ukraine there is no figure of the caliber of Patriarch Filaret,” the publication writes.

Therefore, Zerkalo Nedeli claims, Filaret’s team, even more than the team of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, who made receiving the tomos part of his election program, is now forcing the issue of obtaining autocephaly.

“How it will be is already written out, like clockwork. Synax on Phanar considers the appeal of Patriarch Philaret regarding the illegal anathema and abolishes it. The Council of the Mother Church of Constantinople decides to grant the Tomos to the Ukrainian Church - a charter, they say, has already been written. After this, a unification council is held in Ukraine, at which a patriarch is elected - Filaret, of course, because who else? And this patriarch accepts the Tomos of autocephaly from the hands of representatives of the Mother Church,” the weekly writes.

In this scenario, the question of an alternative candidacy for the patriarch is not even considered, since the overwhelming majority of delegates at the unification council will represent the “Kiev patriarchate.”