Drabinko: Head of Phanar said no one considers Filaret a bishop

Interview with "Metropolitan" Alexander Drabinko. Photo: a video screenshot of DROZDOV youtube channel

In 1993, Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople said that no one in the Orthodox world considers Filaret Denisenko a bishop. Alexander Drabinko, "Metropolitan" of the OCU, recalled this in an interview published on the YouTube channel DROZDOV on January 6, 2021.

“Back in 1993, Patriarch Bartholomew, in a conversation with Zhulinsky (Nikolai Zhulinsky, at that time Deputy Prime Minister for Humanitarian Affairs, who went to Phanar on behalf of the then President of Ukraine Leonid Kravchuk – Ed.), which I already read from Zhulinsky's memo to Kravchuk, said, "Well, what do you want from me – no one in the Orthodox world recognizes Filaret as a bishop." Do you understand what the attitude to him (Filaret – Ed.) as a personality was like?" noted the ex-metropolitan of the UOC.

He emphasized that today Filaret is credited with receiving the Tomos of autocephaly, but "it would have been possible to have both the Tomos and autocephaly back in 1993 if it hadn’t been for Filaret."

Let us remind you that in 1993 the then President of Ukraine Leonid Kravchuk, under whose influence the “Filaret” schism had arisen earlier in Ukraine, made the first attempt to beg for autocephaly from Constantinople.

Earlier, the UOJ wrote that, according to Drabinko, the head of the UOC-KP Filaret wants only power and agreed to the "unification council" because he had been pledged leadership of the OCU.

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