One week before the Pope visited Constantinople and the joint Vatican–Phanar celebration of the 1,700th anniversary of the First Ecumenical Council in Nicaea, an informal “para-council” of ecclesiastical figures convened in Sharjah, a city located along the southern coast of the Persian Gulf in the United Arab Emirates.
Described as the “anti-Bartholomew arc” within Orthodoxy, the Moscow Patriarchate and the deep Russian state principally drove it.
The “round table,” as it was officially termed, took place on November 20 and 21, but it went largely unnoticed by the general news media. However, ecclesiastical centers in the Phanar, Athens, and Washington, as well as the relevant Ministries of Foreign Affairs departments and Intelligence and Information directorates, closely monitored it.
With the blessing of Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, the co-organizers were the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation and Metropolitan Anthony of Volokolamsk, chairman of the Department for External Church Relations. He is widely known as the “Red Kissinger” because of his international, behind-the-scenes activism.
According to reports, the meeting in the UAE was attended by hierarchs, clergy, and lay members of the Russian Orthodox Church, as well as representatives of Russian compatriot organizations from Africa and the Middle East. Among them were Metropolitan Constantine of Cairo and North Africa, the Patriarchal Exarch of Africa, and Bishop Euthymius of Lukhovitsy, Vicar of the Patriarchal Exarchate of Africa.
Numerous lay “senior officials and executives” from the Departments of External and International Relations of the city of Moscow were also present.
The aims of the roundtable
According to journalistic sources and initial assessments by ecclesiastical centers and relevant directorates of the foreign ministries of Greece, Italy, and Cyprus, the main subject on the agenda was the ancient Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Alexandria. Following the granting of autocephaly to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine by the Ecumenical Patriarchate in 2018 — and the vehement opposition of the Moscow Patriarchate, which culminated in severing communion with the Phanar — Patriarch Kirill has “removed the safety pin,” acting entirely unrestrained and moving schismatically against all the churches that co-signed the Tomos of Autocephaly. He has refused to yield to pressure.
Operating within this framework and having failed to persuade Patriarch Theodore of Alexandria on the Ukrainian issue, as he had with the Patriarchs of Jerusalem and Antioch (Theophilos and John, respectively), he has continuously established “exarchates” in Africa, which is the exclusive prerogative of Constantinople, and “ordained” Metropolitans under the pretext of protecting Russian Orthodox believers. This non-canonical act, known in ecclesiastical terminology as an “intursion” (eispidisi), is considered one of the gravest ecclesiastical offenses.
He has even appointed a “Metropolitan of Cairo and North Africa” and several bishops with pastoral and territorial jurisdiction within the canonical territory of the Patriarchate of Alexandria. The financial sums directed from Moscow and its business satellites in the wider region toward these “exarchates” are enormous. The ultimate goal is to drain the Patriarchate of Alexandria of both clergy and faithful, and to elevate the Patriarchate of Moscow as a supposed guarantor of the prosperity of African peoples and the Orthodox Christians living in those countries.
Branches reaching even to the Monastery of Sinai
The bishops in question, together with members of Russia’s diplomatic missions and, regrettably, prominent members of the Egyptian government’s cabinet, are actively supporting the Egyptian Copts (the local Orthodox Church) in various ways so that, jointly — Russian-speaking groups and Copts — they may undermine the ecclesiastical influence of Patriarch Theodoros of Alexandria.
Within this framework, behind-the-scenes moves have also been made against the Greek Orthodox brotherhood at the Monastery of Saint Catherine in Sinai. Several ecclesiastical observers argue that a Russo-Coptic hand lies behind the latest complications that have arisen concerning the Sinai Monastery.
The fluidity of the international landscape, which is gradually intensifying and crystallizing around the Washington–Moscow–Beijing axis, is also affecting the Orthodox — and not only Orthodox — ecclesiastical map. It should be noted that already at the Pan-Orthodox Council in Kolymbari, Crete in 2016, the Moscow Patriarchate, by encouraging opponents of the primacy of Constantinople, contributed to only 10 out of the 14 Orthodox ecclesiastical centers participating (absent were Moscow, Georgia, Antioch, and Bulgaria).
Today, nearly ten years later, the number of “misled” Churches is significantly larger, as the Ukrainian issue has become a “red line” for many Balkan Churches as well. Notably, during the joint Vatican–Phanar commemoration of the 1,700th anniversary of the First Ecumenical Council, many Orthodox Churches that had been invited chose not to attend, including the emblematic Patriarchates of Jerusalem, Moscow, and Antioch.
As for the Patriarchate of Antioch, for many decades it had maintained a forced closeness with the pro-Russian Assad regime — both under Hafez al-Assad and later under his son, Bashar al-Assad — in order to secure protection from jihadist Muslim groups. Once the regime collapsed, the Patriarchate of Antioch found itself without state protection and has been struggling, under extremely harsh conditions, to survive in a deeply hostile environment.
Envoys of the Moscow Patriarchate have entered into coordination with Arabic-speaking Orthodox communities and are intensifying their efforts to diminish the Greek Orthodox and Greek-speaking character of Antioch and to present themselves as the natural protectors of the Patriarchate and its spiritual heritage.
Source: Ta Nea / Translated by: Ioanna Georgakopoulou, Konstantinos Menyktas
