Contemporary Inter-Orthodox Affairs
The two defining events of early 21st-century world Orthodoxy: the Holy and Great Council held in Crete in June 2016, and the granting of autocephaly to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine in 2018–2019, which produced the still-unhealed rupture of communion between Moscow and Constantinople. Both are live inter-Orthodox disputes; this subsection documents the contested positions of every party with dated, both-jurisdiction sourcing.
Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (live inter-Orthodox dispute — both positions documented)
These files treat the most consequential developments among the autocephalous Orthodox churches since the turn of the millennium. They follow the methodology’s rule for sensitive topics: on every contested claim the positions of both the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the Moscow Patriarchate (and the other churches involved) are sourced and dated, and where the historical record itself is disputed — as with the 1686 transfer of the Kyiv metropolitanate — the rival interpretations are named rather than adjudicated.
The two events are connected. The half-century preparation for a pan-Orthodox council, which finally convened in Crete, was meant to demonstrate the conciliar unity of world Orthodoxy; the four-church boycott revealed instead a fragile communion under strain. Two years later that strain became a formal schism over Ukraine. The same fault lines — the prerogatives of Constantinople versus the weight of Moscow, the meaning of conciliarity and consensus, the canonical rules governing autocephaly and territory — run through both.
Section Contents
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| The Holy and Great Council of Crete (2016) | The ~55-year preparation, the six documents, the four abstaining churches, the “churches” terminology controversy, reception status by church, and scholarly assessments both ways |
| Ukrainian Autocephaly and the 2018 Schism | The 1686 background and its disputed interpretation, the three pre-2018 Ukrainian bodies, the 2018 sequence, the 2019 Tomos, recognitions since, parish-transfer disputes, and the broken Moscow–Constantinople communion as of 2026 |
See Also
- The Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople — the senior see and protagonist in both events
- Greece, Bulgaria, and Others — churches divided by both controversies
- Ukraine and the Russian Church — the war’s impact, treated from the Russian side
- Autocephaly and Territory — the canon-law framework underlying both disputes
- Tomos of Autocephaly (1970) — an earlier disputed grant of autocephaly, also from a controversial source
References
- Denysenko, Nicholas E. The Orthodox Church in Ukraine: A Century of Separation. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2018.
- Hovorun, Cyril. “The Cause of Ukrainian Autocephaly,” in Orthodox Christianity and Nationalism in Nineteenth-Century Southeastern Europe. Routledge, 2020.
- Ecumenical Patriarchate. Official site of the Holy and Great Council, holycouncil.org and orthodoxcouncil.org (accessed June 2026).
- Moscow Patriarchate. “Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church expresses its position on the Council held in Crete,” mospat.ru/en/news/49334 (accessed June 2026).