Excerpt from the Address of His All Holiness, the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, to Greeks of Constantinople on Sunday 21 October 2018:
"At this moment our Patriarchate, struggling to resolve the Ukrainian ecclesiastical issue, puts forward the privileges and the rights It has from the Sacred Rules of the Ecumenical Councils. And these rules of the Ecumenical Councils, and even the Fourth Ecumenical Council of Chalcedon, which give to the Ecumenical Patriarchate specific...
privileges of accepting appeals outside Its canonical jurisdiction, these rules are binding for all of Orthodoxy.
Whether our Russian brothers like it or not, soon enough they will get behind the Ecumenical Patriarchate’s solution, as they will have no other choice.
All the latest developments in the matter are in our favor. Of course there are publications, which are well paid by the Russians. Russian black propaganda is directed against the Ecumenical Patriarchate. Because our Slav brothers do not tolerate the lead, which has the Ecumenical Patriarchate, and therefore our Nation, within the World Orthodoxy.
We are proud of this lead with modesty and we strive in a daily struggle to keep these privileges, these rights, which the Providence of God gave, through the decisions of the Ecumenical Councils, to the Venerable Ecumenical Throne, to the First Throne of Orthodoxy."
