Constantinople Patriarch visits Ukraine for independence

By YURAS KARMANAU
Associated Press

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople is visiting Ukraine to attend the festivities marking the 30th anniversary of its declaration of independence. Patriarch Batholomew I and the leader of the new Orthodox Church of Ukraine, Metropolitan Epiphanius I, together conducted a lithurgy in Kyiv’s St. Michael’s Cathedral on Saturday. Late Friday, the Constantinople Patriarch met with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Ukraine declared its independence on Aug. 24, 1991, days after the collapse of a Soviet hardline coup that precipitated the collapse of the USSR. In January 2019, Bartholomew I presented a decree of independence to the head of the nascent Orthodox Church of Ukraine, severing its centuries-long ties with the Russian Orthodox Church.