The Holy and Great Council (Crete, 2016)

The Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church, convened at the Orthodox Academy of Crete on June 19–26, 2016, was the culmination of more than half a century of pan-Orthodox preparation. Ten of the fourteen universally recognized autocephalous churches attended; four — Antioch, Russia, Bulgaria, and Georgia — absented themselves in the weeks before it opened. The council adopted six documents, of which the one on relations with non-Orthodox Christians provoked the sharpest controversy. Its status — whether a genuine pan-Orthodox council or a regional gathering of some churches — remains contested across world Orthodoxy as of 2026.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (live inter-Orthodox dispute — both positions documented)

The Long Preparation (1961–2016)

The idea of a “Holy and Great Council” of the Orthodox Church to address the accumulated questions of the modern era was set in motion at the First Pan-Orthodox Conference at Rhodes in 1961, convened under Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras. Rhodes drew up a long catalogue of potential agenda items; over the following decades the list was progressively narrowed and the texts drafted through a series of pan-Orthodox pre-conciliar conferences and preparatory commissions, most of them meeting at the Orthodox Center of the Ecumenical Patriarchate at Chambésy, Switzerland (Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, “Spirit of Unity Prevails at Holy and Great Council,” goarch.org; “Pan-Orthodox Council,” Wikipedia, used to locate primary documents).

The process was repeatedly slowed by the Cold War (which constrained the churches behind the Iron Curtain), by jurisdictional disputes among the churches, and by disagreement over the agenda and the rules of operation. A decisive push came under Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew: the Synaxis (assembly) of Primates in March 2014 resolved to convene the council in 2016, and a final Synaxis of Primates at Chambésy in January 2016 approved the texts and the rules of operation by which the council would meet. The rules adopted there — that decisions would be taken by consensus of the autocephalous churches, each church voting as a unit through its primate — would prove central to the controversy over the council’s authority (Ecumenical Patriarchate, “Rules of Operation,” orthodoxcouncil.org; “Council of 2016,” OrthodoxWiki).

The Six Documents

The council adopted six documents, whose official titles are (Ecumenical Patriarchate, official advance documents, orthodoxcouncil.org/decisions; holycouncil.org):

The Mission of the Orthodox Church in Today’s World
The Orthodox Diaspora
Autonomy and the Means by Which It Is Proclaimed
The Sacrament of Marriage and Its Impediments
The Importance of Fasting and Its Observance Today
Relations of the Orthodox Church with the Rest of the Christian World

In addition the council issued an Encyclical and a Message summarizing its work (Encyclical of the Holy and Great Council, holycouncil.org/encyclical-holy-council).

The Four Absent Churches

In the two weeks before the opening, four churches one after another announced they would not attend (America Magazine, “Historic Orthodox Council Meets Despite Absence of Four Churches,” July 7, 2016):

Antioch. The Patriarchate of Antioch had been in broken eucharistic communion with the Patriarchate of Jerusalem since 2014, over Jerusalem’s 2013 establishment of an archdiocese in Qatar, which Antioch regarded as its own canonical territory (Pravoslavie.ru, “Church of Antioch breaks off Eucharistic communion with Patriarchate of Jerusalem”; First Things, “The Great Orthodox Council: Antioch Is Different”). Antioch held that an unresolved breach of communion among the participants made a true council impossible, and additionally objected to the pre-conciliar text on marriage and to aspects of the diaspora document (Metropolitan Ignatius, in OrthoChristian, “Antioch staying home also because of documents, not only Qatar”). Antioch declined to sign the rules of operation in January 2016.
Bulgaria. The Holy Synod of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church withdrew on June 1, 2016, citing objections to several of the already-approved texts — especially that they could not be substantively edited on the council floor — and to the seating and procedural arrangements; it specifically faulted the document on relations with non-Orthodox Christians (Declaration of the Holy Synod of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, in OrthoChristian.com/99098.html).
Georgia. The Georgian Orthodox Church announced its non-participation citing doctrinal reservations about several documents, in particular “Relations of the Orthodox Church with the Rest of the Christian World” and the document on the sacrament of marriage (its synod held the marriage text incompatible with Georgian canonical practice on mixed marriages) (“Council of 2016,” OrthodoxWiki; “Pan-Orthodox Council,” Wikipedia).
Russia. Following the withdrawals of Antioch, Bulgaria, and Georgia, the Russian Orthodox Church — by far the largest of the autocephalous churches — declared on June 13, 2016 that, in the absence of those churches, the gathering could not be regarded as a council of all Orthodoxy, and proposed postponement; when this was declined, Moscow stayed away, holding that the principle of consensus among all the autocephalous churches had been broken (Moscow Patriarchate Holy Synod statement; National Catholic Reporter, “Russian Orthodox church calls boycotted Crete council ‘an important event’”).

Constantinople’s spokesmen maintained that the council remained valid and its decisions binding for the churches present, since each church had had the opportunity to attend and the rules did not require unanimity of attendance to convene (Crux, “Without Russia, spokesman says Orthodox council binding,” June 2016).

The “Churches” Terminology Controversy

The fiercest dispute concerned a single ecclesiological question in the document “Relations of the Orthodox Church with the Rest of the Christian World”: whether non-Orthodox bodies may be called “churches.” The pre-conciliar draft spoke of “other Christian Churches and Confessions,” language that conservative critics charged conceded a churchly status that, on Orthodox ecclesiology, belongs only to the Orthodox Church (Public Orthodoxy, “Response to the Pre-Conciliar Document on Relations of the Orthodox Church with the Rest of the Christian World,” May 2016).

Before the council, several churches proposed alternative wording: the Church of Romania suggested “Christian confessions and heterodox communities”; the Church of Cyprus proposed “heterodox churches”; the Church of Greece pressed for “Christian confessions and communities” (Wikipedia, “Pan-Orthodox Council,” collating the pre-conciliar amendments). On the council floor the Church of Greece’s intervention produced the compromise adopted in the final text (§6): that “the Orthodox Church accepts the historical name of other non-Orthodox Christian Churches and Confessions that are not in communion with her” — a formula presented as merely recognizing customary names rather than conferring ecclesial status (final text, §6, holycouncil.org/rest-of-christian-world). Critics noted that the Greek original renders “non-Orthodox” as heterodox and that the qualification did not satisfy those who held the word “church” itself inadmissible.

This was the document the Athonite monasteries had targeted in advance. An open intervention by the Sacred Community of Mount Athos, and a separate April 24, 2016 letter associated with six monasteries (Koutloumousiou, Xeropotamou, Zografou, Karakallou, Philotheou, and Grigoriou), warned that several passages “allow for a double interpretation and await a more precise formulation,” and objected to the conduct and premises of inter-Christian dialogue (Sacred Community of Mount Athos commentary, in Pravoslavie.ru/100123.html; OrthoChristian.com/94272.html — noting that one circulated Athonite statement was later disputed as to its provenance, OrthoChristian.com/105681.html). Some delegate-bishops at the council itself declined to sign the document; the Greek hieromonk and theologian Peter Heers published a book-length traditionalist critique, The “Council” of Crete and the New Emerging Ecclesiology (OrthoChristian.com/102225.html). These objections are presented here as the attributed positions of named parties, not as settled conclusions.

Reception Status by Church (as of 2026)

Reception has been uneven, and the council’s authority remains contested (MDPI Religions, “Orthodoxy and Ecumenical Dialogue after Crete Synod (2016),” 2023):

Constantinople, and with it the Greek-tradition churches that attended (Alexandria, Jerusalem, Greece, Cyprus, Albania, and others) generally received the documents and treat the council as a genuine pan-Orthodox council.
Russia. The Holy Synod in July 2016 refused to recognize the gathering as pan-Orthodox or its documents as expressing “pan-Orthodox consensus,” and ordered the texts studied; the Bishops’ Council of November–December 2017 confirmed that the Crete council “cannot be viewed as a Holy and Great Council” and its decisions are not binding on the whole Church, because the consensus principle had been violated by the absence of several local churches (Moscow Patriarchate, mospat.ru/en/news/49334; OrthodoxEthos, “The Moscow Patriarchate on the ‘Council’ of Crete”).
Antioch declared (June 27, 2016) that the Crete documents are not binding on it and that the gathering was “a preliminary meeting on the way to a Pan-Orthodox Council,” its texts “not final but still open to discussion.”
Georgia (its Holy Synod, late 2016) rejected the claim that the council was pan-Orthodox and denied that its texts reflect Orthodox teaching.
Bulgaria likewise withheld recognition and, in a 2016 synodal declaration, criticized the “Relations” text specifically (OrthoChristian.com/99098.html).

The practical result is a council recognized as binding by some autocephalous churches and treated as a non-binding regional gathering by others — itself an illustration of the conciliar fragmentation the council had been meant to overcome.

Scholarly Assessments

Defenders argue from conciliarity. The Ecumenical Patriarchate’s press adviser, Archdeacon John Chryssavgis, contended that “every council in history has met precisely because there was disunity… it would be dangerous if we missed this opportunity to take the first step toward conciliality” (Chryssavgis, in First Things, “On the Great Council of the Orthodox Church,” 2016). The Greek theologian Pantelis Kalaitzidis saw “a sign of hope… after so many centuries of motionlessness and inertia,” the Orthodox Church “launching itself once more in a conciliar process” (Kalaitzidis, cited in America Magazine, 2016). On this reading, Crete reactivated a conciliar capacity dormant since antiquity and its imperfections do not nullify it.

Critics mount a legitimacy challenge. Traditionalist and Russian-aligned commentators argue that a council from which four of fourteen churches — including the largest — were absent cannot bind world Orthodoxy, and that the consensus rule the churches themselves had adopted in January 2016 was breached the moment the council proceeded without them (Moscow Patriarchate Bishops’ Council statement, 2017; OrthodoxEthos). Heers and others press a deeper ecclesiological objection: that the “Relations” document’s language imports a post-Vatican-II distinction between “churches” and “ecclesial communities” foreign to Orthodox ecclesiology (Heers, The “Council” of Crete). Between these poles, scholars such as those in the 2023 Religions survey treat Crete as a real but partial achievement — convened, productive of texts, yet unable to claim the universal reception that would make it unquestionably “great.”

References

Ecumenical Patriarchate. Holy and Great Council, official documents and rules of operation. holycouncil.org and orthodoxcouncil.org (accessed June 2026).
“Relations of the Orthodox Church with the Rest of the Christian World” (final conciliar text). holycouncil.org/rest-of-christian-world.
Encyclical of the Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church. holycouncil.org/encyclical-holy-council.
Holy Synod of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church. Declaration on the Council of Crete. OrthoChristian.com/99098.html.
Moscow Patriarchate. “Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church expresses its position on the Council held in Crete,” July 2016. mospat.ru/en/news/49334; Bishops’ Council resolution, 2017.
Sacred Community of Mount Athos and Athonite monasteries, commentaries on the pre-conciliar documents (2016). Pravoslavie.ru/100123.html; OrthoChristian.com/94272.html.
Heers, Peter. The “Council” of Crete and the New Emerging Ecclesiology: An Orthodox Examination. (Summarized at OrthoChristian.com/102225.html.)
Chryssavgis, John. “On the Great Council of the Orthodox Church.” First Things, 2016.
Kalaitzidis, Pantelis, and reporting in America Magazine, “Historic Orthodox Council Meets Despite Absence of Four Churches,” July 7, 2016.
“Orthodoxy and Ecumenical Dialogue after Crete Synod (2016) and Social Ethos Document (2020).” Religions 14, no. 7 (2023): 936. MDPI.
“Pan-Orthodox Council” and “Council of 2016,” Wikipedia and OrthodoxWiki (used to locate primary documents; council dates June 19–26, 2016; ten attending churches; the four absentees and their dates of withdrawal).