UPDATED: Moscow Patriarchate to take in HUNDREDS of Alexandrian Clergy over Ukraine Concelebration

UPDATE: This Interfax-Religion English article, as opposed to a translation, says “hundreds” of clergy are joining, which substantially changes the import of the article.

(Source) (Source 2) Hundreds of clergy of the Alexandrian Patriarchate are joining Moscow over the Alexandrian Patriarchate’s concelebration with the new US-state department funded “Orthodox Church of Ukraine” (UOC-IA). Things are heating up! In another document, the Patriarchal Holy Synod noted that Constantinople’s moves are being “controlled by external forces”, reminiscent of Sergianism. (See resolution #60 here, which also flatly declares “Patriarch Bartholomew lost the trust of millions of believers. To emphasize that in conditions when the majority of Orthodox believers in the world are not in church communion with him, he no longer has the right to speak on behalf of the entire world Orthodoxy and present himself as its leader.”)

Yandex Translation

The Russian Orthodox Church is going to accept into its ranks clerics of the Church of Alexandria who do not recognize the OCU

Moscow. September 24. INTERFAX.EN-The Russian Orthodox Church will consider accepting into its ranks clerics of the Patriarchate of Alexandria who do not agree with the decision of their primate to recognize the Ukrainian non –canonical church-the Orthodox Church of Ukraine.

“Taking into account the numerous appeals of the clergy of the Orthodox Church of Alexandria to His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia with a request to accept them under the omophorion of the Moscow Patriarchate, I instruct His Grace Archbishop Leonid of Vladikavkaz and Alania to submit proposals to the Holy Synod after a thorough study of the received appeals,” the final documents of the Synod held this week in Moscow say.

In November last year, Metropolitan Leonid, who is also the deputy head of the Department for External Church Relations of the Russian Orthodox Church, reported that the number of Alexandrian clerics who want to go under the omophorion of the Russian Orthodox Church is “not one hundred”.

The reason for considering this issue at the Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church was the concelebration of Patriarch Theodore of Alexandria with the head of the aforementioned non-canonical Church of Ukraine, Epiphany Dumenko, which took place on August 13 at the Turkish acute Imvros.

The Synod noted that the concelebration of Patriarch Theodore II with “the head of the schismatic structure operating in Ukraine” further deepens the schism between the Russian and Alexandrian churches.

The Patriarch of Alexandria is the “second in honor” after the Patriarch of Constantinople among the primates of the local Orthodox churches of the world. In his youth, he studied at the University of Odessa, and later, from 1985 to 1990, he was the rector of the Alexandrian monastery in Odessa. For a long time, he was known as one of the main defenders of canonical Orthodoxy in Ukraine.

In 2018, Theodore II paid a visit to Odessa to express solidarity with the canonical Church of this country, and promised her his support at the international level. However, a year later, he still declared the recognition of the non-canonical church of Ukraine, which many pastors of the Patriarchate of Alexandria did not agree with.