Bishops await decision on Ukraine church

Bishops in Moscow and Kiev are awaiting a looming decision on whether Ukraine will get an independent church, ending Russian religious rule in the country and sending shockwaves through the eastern Orthodox world.

Istanbul- based Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople,

of Orthodox Christian leaders, is expected to rule in the coming months on a Ukrainian appeal to cut spiritual ties with Moscow.

The decision comes against the backdrop of an ongoing, four-year

backed rebels in eastern Ukraine that made many Ukrainians turn away from the Moscow church.

Bartholomew’s rival, Russia’s Patriarch Kirill, has called the prospect of the Ukrainian church being separated from Moscow an “all-Orthodox catastrophe.”

He is travelling to Turkey for a summit on Friday in a bid to stop this from happening.

The Orthodox church in Ukraine is split between a branch whose clerics pledge loyalty to Moscow and one that is overseen by the unrecognised Kiev-based Patriarch Filaret.

While Constantinople is the oldest Orthodox Church, Moscow is currently the most powerful with the largest number of worshippers.

It is unclear what granting Ukraine the right to create an independent church will mean in practice. Russian church expert Andrei Desnitsky said “nobody knows” how many churches Moscow will lose as a result.

But experts agree that, whatever shape such a decision would take, it would be a blow to Russia’s spiritual authority in the Orthodox world.

Ukrainian lawmakers in April joined the Kiev- based church’s appeal to Patriarch Bartholomew to take the country back under his spiritual wing.

They stressed Kiev’s medieval links to Constantinople, saying that Christianity came to Kiev from the city now known as Istanbul in the 10th century before it was transferred to the Moscow patriarchy in 1686.