Tomos

Tomos (pronounced tomm-oss)

In Orthodox Christianity, an ecclesiastical document, usually promulgated by a synod, and used to communicate or announce important information.

1510-1520: From the French, from the Latin tomus, from the Ancient Greek τόμος (tomos) (section, slice, roll of paper or papyrus, volume), from τέμνω (témnō or témnein) (I cut, separate); a doublet of tome which persists in English and is used to refer to heavy, large, or learned books.

The Ukraine and the Moscow–Constantinople Schism of 2019

Bartholomew I, Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople executes the Tomos, attended by Metropolitan Epiphanius I of Kiev, 5 January 2019.

In Istanbul (Constantinople), on Saturday 5 January 2019, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I (b 1940; 270th archbishop of Constantinople and Ecumenical Patriarch since 1991) signed a Tomos, an act formalizing his decision in October  2020 to create an independent Ukrainian Orthodox Church, thus splitting it from the Russian church to which it has been tied since 1686.  Until the decree, the Orthodox Church in Ukraine that was a branch of the Russian Church was considered legitimate and two others were regarded as schismatic. The new church unites the two formerly schismatic bodies with what is now the official Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

Tomos of autocephaly of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, signed by the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I on 5 January 2019.

The most immediate implication of the signing of the Tomos is that Ukrainian clerics are forced immediately to pick sides, needing to choose between the Moscow-backed and the newly independent Ukrainian churches, a choice that will have to be taken with fighting in eastern Ukraine between government forces and Russia-backed rebels as a backdrop.  Although there’s no formal link of establishment between church and state in Ukraine, the Ukrainian president immediately declared “…the Tomos is one more act declaring the independence of Ukraine”.  In the immediate aftermath of the ceremony in Istanbul, it appeared some two-thirds of the Ukrainian churches have sundered their relationship with Moscow.

Neither the Kremlin nor the Orthodox Patriarch of Moscow are best pleased with Bartholomew granting the Ukrainian church autocephaly (independence) and the Russian church immediately severed ties with Constantinople, the centre of the Orthodox world.  A spokesman for the Russia-affiliated faction of the Church in Ukraine issued a statement saying the Tomos was “…anti-canonical” and will visit upon the Ukraine nothing but “…trouble, separation and sin".  In this, Moscow concurred, one archbishop adding that “…instead of healing the schism, instead of uniting Orthodoxy, we got an even greater schism that exists solely for political reasons.”

Although Orthodoxy was itself born of a schism and this latest split, already described as the Moscow–Constantinople Schism of 2019 is but the latest, the political and military situation in which it exists doesn’t auger well for a peaceful resolution.  In the Kremlin, Mr Putin notes such things and no good will come of this.