TO FIND THE ROLE OF THE CHURCH IN THE MODERN WORLD, WITHOUT COMPROMISING OUR PRINCIPLES – UOC PRIMATE ON THE TASKS OF THE PAN-ORTHODOX COUNCIL

Pravoslavie.ru – June 2016

In his interview with the media of Poltava His Beatitude Metropolitan Onufry of Kiev and All Ukraine spoke on what he expects from the Pan-Orthodox Council to be held late in June this year on Crete, reports the UOC MP’s Synodal Information and Education Department.

Pondering the cause and mission of the expected inter-Church meeting, His Beatitude said that at the present stage the Orthodox Church exists in the difficult environment of the world’s transformation. “Today there is a reorganization of the world going on, a new world is being developed in which political boundaries are becoming less and less important and they will eventually disappear. And the Church has the task of finding its place in this new format of the world,” the primate noted.

“This Council aims to find the role of the Church in the world – a place where we would not compromise our rules, principles and dogmas, but where we would live on and labor for the salvation, which the Church has been doing for already 2000 years,” His Beatitude Metropolitan Onufry stressed.

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On June 3, 2016, at the St. Daniel’s Monastery in Moscow His Beatitude Metropolitan Onufry of Kiev and All the Ukraine took part in the meeting of the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church.

During the meeting of the Synod its members, among other things, considered serious problems arisen in the course of the preparations for the Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church scheduled for June 18-26, 2016, especially concerning the refusal of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church (BOC) to take part in the Council if its dates are not put off, and concerning the serious criticism with regard to the very process of preparation of the Council along with draft documents of the Council in the Russian Orthodox Church and in a number of other Local Orthodox Churches.