Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople, the head of the Eastern Orthodox Church, started his three-day visit to Kyiv on Aug. 20.
Bartholomew is visiting Ukraine on the occasion of its 30th Independence Day, to be celebrated on Aug. 24.
The visit is important for the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, the new church founded in 2018 that unites around one-half of Ukraine’s parishioners.
The new church is independent from the Russian Orthodox Church, while the traditional Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Moscow’s Patriarchy, still popular among Ukrainians, is a subordinate of Moscow in the hierarchy of the Eastern Orthodox Churches.
Bartholomew met with Metropolitan Epiphanius, the head of the independent Ukrainian Orthodox Church, at the St. Michael’s Monastery in central Kyiv, and laid flowers to the memorial for the Ukrainian soldiers killed in Russia’s war against Ukraine.
