Patriarch Bartholomew accuses Serbian and Russian Churches of ingratitude

Patriarch Bartholomew on Imbros. Photo: Orthodoxia News Agency

On August 12, 2026, Great Vespers for the Feast of the Transfiguration according to the new calendar were celebrated at St George Church on the island of Imbros by Patriarch Theodoros of Alexandria and Archbishop Joan of Albania. Patriarch Bartholomew also attended the service.

In his address, the Ecumenical Patriarch accused Local Churches of ingratitude and also made a thinly veiled reference to the Serbian primate, who has still not made a “peace visit” to the Phanar.

“The Church of Russia emerged in the 16th century, while the Churches of the Balkans emerged in the 19th and 20th centuries. And all of them, before their autocephaly was proclaimed, were part of the jurisdiction of our Ecumenical Patriarchate,” Patriarch Bartholomew said.

According to him, Constantinople “diminished itself and itself granted them ecclesiastical independence, known as autocephaly – it weakened itself in order to serve each Orthodox people.”

“And not infrequently, the Mother Church received from these Churches a cup of ingratitude,” Bartholomew added.

He then explicitly named the Russian Church, saying that “the ingratitude of the Church of Russia – and not only of Russia – toward the Mother Church of Constantinople, from which they received the light of the Christian faith and enlightenment,” continues. The head of the Phanar warned those who, in his view, “oppose the canonical order” that they “will sooner or later answer to God.”

A separate part of the speech was devoted to primates who have not come to the Phanar for the so-called peace visit. Bartholomew referred to “the order according to which every newly elected Orthodox primate, upon taking the helm of his Church, begins visiting the other Orthodox Churches, naturally starting with the Ecumenical Patriarchate.”

After praising Archbishop Joan of Albania for observing this order, Patriarch Bartholomew immediately contrasted him with unnamed fellow primates: “Other primates, although four or five years have passed since their election and enthronement, still delay fulfilling this duty toward the Church of Constantinople, while having visited other Churches – the fourth and fifth – bypassing the first.”

Patriarch Bartholomew did not name anyone, but his reference to the order of the diptychs leaves little room for doubt: the fourth and fifth sees are Jerusalem and Moscow. The description “four or five years since their election” fits the primate of the Serbian Church, Patriarch Porfirije, who was elected in February 2021.

Earlier, the UOJ reported that Patriarch Bartholomew had spoken of “ungrateful children from the North.”

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