Twenty-five years ago, on February 23, 1996, a rift between the Moscow Patriarchate and the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople came to a head with Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew’s recognition of the Orthodox Church of Estonia as independent of Moscow, under the direct jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. The battle for recognition for the Orthodox Church of Estonia came to a close after almost four years of unsuccessful negotiations with Moscow.
Patriarch Bartholomew announced on February 20, 1996, that the Ecumenical Patriarchate was “following the persistent request of the Estonian government and the overwhelming majority of the Estonian Orthodox parishes, which requested they be placed again under the aegis of the Ecumenical Patriarchate,” reactivating on February 22, 1996, the Church’s Tomos of Autocephaly of 1923, which had been issued by Ecumenical Patriarch Meletios IV.
A delegation representing the Ecumenical Patriarchate concelebrated divine liturgy with Estonian clergy and in the presence of Archbishop John of Finland at the Church of Our Lord in Tallinn on February 24, which officially marked the reactivation of the autocephaly of the Estonian Church. Archbishop John of Finland was named locum tenens of the Autonomous Estonian Apostolic Church, and the Church is currently led by Metropolitan Stephanos of Tallinn and all Estonia, who was elected in 1999.
The Moscow Patriarchate, as a result of the February 1996 decision by Constantinople, officially broke relations and omitted the name of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew from its list of recognized heads of Orthodox Churches (known as diptychs) that are read during divine liturgy, commemorating the heads of the Churches. Patriarch Filaret (Denysenko) of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church – Kyiv Patriarchate (UOC-KP) told reporters in Kyiv that the Estonian Orthodox Church was forcibly under the control of the Moscow Patriarchate since 1940, when Estonia was subjugated by the Soviet Union.
Patriarch Filaret said on March 5, 1996, that the move by Constantinople may mark the beginning of the end of the Russian Orthodox Church’s “spiritual empire,” and could speed efforts for recognition of an independent Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU).
Experts noted that the major hurdle for Ukraine’s Orthodox Church to be recognized as autocephalous by Patriarch Bartholomew was the unification of Ukraine’s fractured Orthodox Churches: the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (UAOC), the UOC-KP and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church – Moscow Patriarchate (UOC-MP). That process was initiated in October 1993, when Ukraine’s government officials lobbied the Patriarchate of Constantinople for official recognition.
The point of contention, observers noted, was getting the leaders of the UOC-MP and the UOC-KP to unite. Religious experts in Ukraine also suggested that Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew was hesitant to recognize a united Orthodox Church of Ukraine in order not to offend Moscow Patriarch Alexey II. If Metropolitan Volodymyr (Sabodan) of the UOC-MP was to break ties with Patriarch Alexey and the Moscow Patriarchate, it would truly mark the end of the imperialist Moscow Patriarchate and was believed would initiate a schism in relations between the patriarchates of Constantinople and Moscow.
Patriarch Filaret noted that Moscow’s actions were not isolated to Estonia, but splits among Orthodox believers were fomented by Moscow in Latvia and in Ukraine, as well.
Patriarch Alexey told ITAR-TASS news agency on February 26, 1996, that the rift was temporary between Moscow and Constantinople, and hinted that a solution could be found. Some observers said the rift could become one of the biggest breaks in the Christian world since the Great Schism of 1054, which Moscow has reiterated since 2018-2019 with the formation of the OCU through the 2018 Unification Council and recognition of the OCU by the Ecumenical Patriarchate with the granting of the Tomos of Autocephaly in 2019.
Just as with Ukraine with two co-existing Orthodox Church structures (OCU and UOC-MP), Estonia has two parallel Orthodox Church jurisdictions: the Estonian Orthodox Church – Moscow Patriarchate and the Orthodox Church of Estonia. Moscow maintains to this day its position that the issues between Moscow, Tallinn and Constantinople have not been resolved. Archbishop Job (Getcha) of Telmessos, hierarch of the Ecumenical Patriarchate who is of Ukrainian descent, rejected the idea that there could be two jurisdictions over Ukraine the way there are two jurisdictions in Estonia, stating that canonically there could be only one church on the territory of Ukraine and that therefore an exarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine was “simply uncanonical” and that in Ukraine “there can be no repetition of Estonia’s scenario.”
Source: “Rift between Constantinople and Moscow may have grave repercussions in Ukraine,” by Marta Kolomayets, The Ukrainian Weekly, March 10, 1996.