Poroshenko announces date of “unification council”

The long-awaited Ukrainian “unification council” will take place on December 15 in Kiev, says Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko.

“The council will be held on December 15, 2018 in St. Sophia’s, which for centuries has been the center of Ukrainian Orthodox religious life,” Poroshenko said at a local government forum in Kiev.

A message on the Patriarchate of Constantinople’s website from November 19 stated that the Synod would set the date for the Council at its November 27-29 session. Despite this, the official message following the session said nothing of the date, though Poroshenko has now made it public.

The expected date of the council has been repeatedly pushed back. Most recently, it was announced by Ukrainian politicians and reported in Ukrainian media that the council would take place on November 21 or 22.

The council intends to bring together the hierarchs of the Ukraine’s two schismatic groups, the “Kiev Patriarchate” and the “Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church,” and any hierarchs of the canonical Ukrainian Church who desire to take part, though His Eminence Metropolitan Pavel of Vyshgorod and Chernobyl, the abbot of the Kiev Caves, recently said that no bishops of the canonical Church will take part.

The council will choose the head for the new church being created by Constantinople and will adopt its statutes, which were already written by the Holy Synod of Constantinople at its latest session.

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