The Archbishop of Cyprus said that Russian President Vladimir Putin was making a huge mistake and does not care how many lives are spent.
“Putin can go to church, repent, put up his cross, commune, but at the same time kill. “Is this his orthodoxy?” He asked.
The Archbishop reiterated that the developments in Ukraine vindicated the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople when he performed and supported the Autocephaly of the Church of Ukraine.
The Patriarch and the Archbishop rejected Moscow’s Patriarch Kirill’s objections, that Constantinople had overstepped its ecclesiastical powers.
“The brothers who said that the Ukrainian issue is theological and ecclesiastical were refuted. “It turned out to be political,” Archbishop Chrysostomos II said.
As for the churches that were in favor of Russia, he said that things are clear.
“Let us not forget that half of Orthodoxy was under communism and unfortunately they are still influenced by the Russians,” he added.
On 5 January 2019, Patriarch Bartholomew and Metropolitan Epiphanius celebrated a Divine Liturgy in St. George’s Cathedral in Istanbul. The Tomos was signed thereafter, also in St. George’s Cathedral. The Tomos come into force from the moment of its signing.
A Tomos in the Eastern Orthodox Church is a decree of the head (Patriarch Bartholomew) of the Eastern Orthodox church on matters such as the level of dependence of an autonomous church from its mother church.
The Moscow–Constantinople schism of 1996 began on 23 February 1996, when the Russian Orthodox Church severed full communion with the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. That power schism ended on 16 May 1996 when the Russian Orthodox Church and the Ecumenical Patriarchate reached an agreement establishing parallel jurisdictions. The ex-communication was in response to the Ecumenical Patriarchate’s decision on 20 February 1996 to re-establish an autonomous Orthodox church in Estonia under the Ecumenical Patriarchate’s jurisdiction.
The 1996 schism has similarities with the schism of October 2018, (the Ukrainian schism). Both schisms were caused by a dispute between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Ecumenical Patriarchate. The dispute concerned the canonical jurisdiction over the territory in Eastern Europe over which the Russian Orthodox Church claimed to have the exclusive canonical jurisdiction, such territory being a part of the former Soviet Union, which upon its collapse had become an independent state (Ukraine in 2018, Estonia in 1996). The break of communion in 1996 was made by Moscow unilaterally, as in 2018
Archbishop Chrysostomos II also spoke about the recent surgery he underwent after a hand fracture, he said that he has patience, faith, and courage and does not count on anything.
“I have everything in God, I believe in him, in him I have my hopes and I believe that I will do well,” he concluded.