MP Spokesman in Palestine: Communion with JP and MP may be cut
MP spokesman in Jerusalem says that concelebrations and communion may be cut off between MP and JP over Kiev; as it is, communion between the EP and the MP is over and done with:
Hegumen Nikon, Secretary of the Russian Orthodox Church in Jerusalem, says: “If the Patriarchate of Jerusalem takes the side of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, and, as a result, allows the Philaretists to serve in the Holy Sepulchre, and in its other churches in the Holy Land, then we will have to suspend service with them. I suppose that it will be necessary to suspend communication with the Jerusalem Patriarchate, because in this case they will side with the schismatics.”
As it stands now, the current main claimant to the See of Jerusalem, Theophilus, rose to power over a manufactured scandal to remove the previous occupant,Irenaios ;Theophilus, a cousin of CIA director George Tenet, having support from the Ecumenical Patriarchate, and the quiet acquiescence of the other World Patriarchates removed Patriarch Irenaios for claims of land sales, which were later proven to be false. The expulsion of Irenaios and the rise of Theophilus once against demonstrates the ever growing control the Phanar seeks in the Middle East.
If concelebrations, and then later, communion, are severed between the Moscow Patriarchate and the Jerusalem Patriarch, if the JP allows any Ukrainians from the KP under the Phanar to concelebrate in any JP churches, the repercussions will be massive; the questions are multitude, for one, what will happen to the property question of the Russian ecclesiastical mission and the whole ‘status quo’ problem?
