No religious split-lines, ROC says to Abkhaz

1/4/13 Tbilisi, DFWatch – Abkhaz de facto leader was evidently informed that Russian Orthodox Church, unlike the Kremlin which recognized Abkhazia as an independent country, wouldn’t tolerate drawing ecclesiastical borders along political split-lines, at least formally. During a meeting in Sochi, Russian resort city just few kilometers from breakaway Abkhazia, Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, chairman of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Department for External Church Relations, pointed out to Alexander Ankvab, Abkhaz separatist leader, that all clerical disputes would be settled only according to the ecclesiastical means – in other words, Georgian Church, holding a canonic authority over Abkhazia, should have some kind of a sway in Abkhaz spiritual life. During the meeting of March 28, attended by Metropolitan Hilarion of Russia, Mitropolitan Seraphime of Georgia and Alexander Ankvab, the latter ‘underscored that spiritual ties of the Abkhazian clergy and Orthodox people of Abkhazia with the Georgian Orthodox Church had been lost long ago and could not be re-established,’ according to the official website of Russian Orthodox Church