ISTANBUL, April 22 – The Holy and Sacred Synod of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, the leader of Orthodox Christians, began the process that may end up granting the Ukrainian church independence from Moscow for the first time since 1686.

The Synod had a meeting on Thursday and Friday to initiate the process, days after President Petro Poroshenko and the Ukrainian Parliament had asked the Patriarch to do so.

Patriarch Bartholomew, during his visit to Kyiv in July 2008, declined to grant the Ukrainian church independence despite the request made by then-President Viktor Yushchenko.

But this time may be different as Ukraine lost 10,000 lives fighting off the Russian aggression since early 2014. Moscow annexed the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea in March 2014 and invaded eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk in military conflict that is still underway.

“In accordance with the Divine and Sacred Canons, as well as century-old ecclesiastical order and Holy Tradition, the Ecumenical Patriarchate concerns itself with the preservation of Pan-Orthodox unity and the care for the Orthodox Churches throughout the world—especially of the Ukrainian Orthodox Nation that has received the salvific Christian faith and holy baptism from Constantinople,” the secretariat said in a communiqué.

“Thus, as its true Mother Church, it examined matters pertaining to the ecclesiastical situation in Ukraine, as done in previous synodal sessions, and having received from ecclesiastical and civil authorities—representing millions of Ukrainian Orthodox Christians—a petition that requests the bestowal of autocephaly, decided to closely communicate and coordinate with its sister Orthodox Churches concerning this matter,” the secretariat said. “All the items on the agenda were reviewed and discussed and the appropriate decisions were made.”

In order for the Ukrainian church to receive the autocephaly Patriarch Bartholomew would have to issue a tomos, a special church paper granting the intendance.

The Ukrainian Orthodox church directly reported to the Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch until the middle of 17 century, when it had been forcibly taken under authority of the Russian Orthodox Church. The shift has been pushed hard by Russia’s tzar Peter the Great.

A rival Ukrainian church was formed after the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991. However, only the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which is subordinate to the Moscow Patriarchy, is recognized in Eastern Orthodoxy.

Proponents of the independent church in Ukraine have considered placing it under the jurisdiction of Constantinople - as an Orthodox church in Estonia did in the 1990s — to win recognition later. (nr/ez)