Bartholomew and Epiphanius sell Orthodoxy wholesale and retail

It turned out that Bartholomew is a Christ seller, consignor and an adapter though he is the person who called himself as “Ecumenical” Patriarch.

The President of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, having not considering Bartholomew in any way, deprived the world-famous St. Sophia Cathedral in Istanbul of its museum status and declared it a mosque.

It was not just an insult, it was Bartholomew’s dipping in a vat with impurities for many times.

In response, Bartholomew only kept a brave and courageous silence, without saying a word “against” such actions of the Turkish president. Hundreds and hundreds of Christian martyrs may have passed before his eyes, including Jesus Christ himself, who had terrible suffering for his faith. And as Bartholomew did not want to repeat their way, he honored the best way out in this situation to keep silence and preserve his earthly goods and wealth, as well as real estate in Istanbul district of Fener.

In fact, Bartholomew only showed his idiom once again, as he had been on this way for a long time.

After all, in January 2019, Bartholomew signed a decree of the U.S. State Department on the provision of autocephaly to the so-called dissenting “Orthodox Church of Ukraine”.

Then on 6 January 2019, the former Ukrainian President Poroshenko said in his address after the Istanbul autocephaly tomos ceremony, that this fact was actually another act of declaring Ukraine’s independence.

In the morning of the same day, Bartholomew gave a tomos to Epiphanius, the Metropolitan of Kiev and All Ukraine.

On Christmas Eve, the tomos was brought to Kiev by plane and the celebration of this event began, but then it suddenly turned out that this epochal document was not signed by the bishops of Constantinople Patriarchate, and it was immediately taken back to Istanbul.

This behavior of Bartholomew, which was recognized as divisive by the vast majority of Orthodox churches in the world, caused a storm of outrage.

On July 26, 2020, a mass action of Orthodox believers, which was attended by at least 2 thousand people was on St` Michael`s Square.

The believers expressed the outrage of Epiphanius’ behaviuor, who, together with Bartholomew, remained completely silent about the fact of the annexation of St. Sophia Cathedral by the Turkish president. They demanded a change of Epiphanius.

Especially as the new “metropolitan of Kiev and All Ukraine” Epiphanius immediately after his appointment rushed to appropriate the church property of other Christian concessions in Ukraine, also including the one that belonged to his spiritual (or maybe not only spiritual?) Father Filaret, “Patriarch of Kiev and All Ukraine”, who also headed the unrecognized “Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kiev Patriarchate”.

These actions have caused so fierce indignation of Filaret, that Epiphanius had to go backwards and leave Filaret almost all his property, as well as assign the title of the whole “Honorary Patriarch”.

In a word, Bartholomew’s decisions with the respect to the Ukrainian “tomos” did not lead to the unity of world Orthodoxy, but further strengthened its split.

Since the signing of “tomos”, Epiphanius has been trying in various ways to take over the parishes of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarch, cooperating with the gangs of Ukrainian nationalists, who, traveling to Ukrainian cities and villages, forcibly tried to expel priests of the UOC MP together with parishioners from churches. However, in the overwhelming majority of cases, the violent mercenaries of Epiphanius were waiting for failure, especially in the East and South of Ukraine. The believers were able to give a decent response to the dissenters.

Thus, the moral image and actions of Epiphanius and his chief Bartholomew almost immediately began to arouse a sense of deep contempt in Ukraine.

And then they remembered the Metropolitan Vinnitsa and Barsky Simeon (Shostatsky), who in the euphoria of “pre-tomos” fever were also predicted in the heads of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine.

The undoubted “pluses” of the biography of the still unfulfilled head of the dissenting Orthodox Church of Ukraine in Kiev are that during Euromaidan, by that time already he was the Metropolitan of Vinnitsa, Simeon called to stop the bloodshed, but then quickly became a nationalist. The Ukrainian language was used in his diocese instead of Church Slavic. And Simeon tries to show himself as an “Ukrainian statesman” at every opportunity, which in the current situation in Kiev is regarded as unconditional loyalty to the ideals of Euromaidan.

The dissatisfaction with Epiphanius has long started in Washington as well, as he could not quickly and qualitatively fulfill the task of expelling of UOC MP from Ukraine. The State Department is not used to take excuses into account like “it’s not my fault, it’s unconscious parishioners” and intends to promote a person who will find the methods to fulfill the tasks to the post of the Primate of unrecognized “Orthodox Church of Ukraine”.