source – in-cyprus.philenews.com
The months-long crisis in the Church of Cyprus appears headed toward resolution following yesterday’s announcement from the Ecumenical Patriarchate regarding Bishop Tychikos’ appeal.
According to well-informed ecclesiastical sources speaking to Phileleftheros, if events proceed smoothly and Bishop Tychikos complies with the Holy Synod’s decisions by signing the required profession of faith, he will likely be named Bishop of Kourion, Soloi or Lapithos – ancient episcopals dating back to the early centuries of Christianity.
Bishop Tychikos was removed from the Metropolitan throne of Paphos several months ago, with Archbishop George of Cyprus temporarily assuming those duties until elections for a new Metropolitan can be held.
In the interim, Tychikos appealed to the Ecumenical Patriarchate, challenging the decision of the Holy Synod of the Church of Cyprus to remove him from the Metropolitan throne of Paphos, which delayed the announcement of elections.
Yesterday’s announcement from the Ecumenical Patriarchate’s Synod, recommending that Bishop Tychikos obey the decisions of the Church of Cyprus Synod, opens the way both for elections for a new Metropolitan and for determining Bishop Tychikos’ future.
Following the Holy Synod’s decision removing Bishop Tychikos, the Archbishop had requested that Tychikos sign a profession of faith acknowledging the decisions of all Ecumenical Councils, with emphasis on the 2016 Council of Crete. Despite meetings between Tychikos and the Archbishop, this has not occurred, leaving the matter unresolved.
Exclusive information obtained by Phileleftheros indicates that from today, Bishop Tychikos must sign the profession to retain his episcopal position. He will also need to relocate to the buildings of the Archbishopric of Cyprus in Nicosia, where he will be provided accommodation and assigned duties by the Archbishop of Cyprus. Currently, Bishop Tychikos resides in the Paphos Metropolis quarters.
If all proceeds smoothly and Tychikos does not refuse, these sources report that he will be named Bishop of Kourion, Soloi or Lapithos. Should Tychikos refuse to comply with the decisions of both the Holy Synod and now the Ecumenical Patriarchate, the possibility of his defrocking cannot be ruled out.
Regarding the election of a new Metropolitan of Paphos, our sources indicate this is expected to take place in the early months of 2026.
Did this bishop really believe that Pope Bartholomew would rule any other way?
Hard to sympathize for his being foolish enough to appeal to the Patriarchate. The Eastern Pope will support Archbishop George and others like Ieronymos of Athens unconditionally in all things because they support the Phanar’s absurd claims.
This solidifies the Phanar’s dictatorship over the Church of Cyprus. The Russians have correctly stated that the Phanar has no right to hear appeals from outside his own Patriarchate. The Churches of Cyprus and Greece in due time will be ruined as the Archdiocese in America has been.
Even Mount Athos has lost some of its stature because some of its Monasteries blindly obey the Phanar on Ukraine.
The monasteries of Mt. Athos rely on the financial support of Russian pilgrims. It can not be an easy decision for them to receive the OCU and then possibly lose Russian financial support.
Right! The monks in Mt. Athos only are doing this for the money, not because OCU is a schismatic church that is not recognized by most of the canonical orthodox churches! Seriously? You have reached a new low, Joseph. You should be ashamed! Schism is a very serious sin. We do not recognize OCU because they are not real orthodox, not because we are getting Russian money!!! OCU is made of a lot of defrocked priests with very few followers. Just because they are dressed like priests, doesn’t mean they are.
Sandy, I attended a symposium in 2016 on 1,000 years of Russian monasticism on Mt. Athos. That symposium was held at the seminary of the Holy Trinity Lavra outside of Moscow. It was largely a propaganda exercise in asserting the ecclesial power of the Moscow Patriarchate, and on Mt. Athos in particular. However, what was downplayed at that symposium was that the 1,000 year Slavic heritage on Mt. Athos really comes from Kievan Rus. The Russian Church has simply co-opted that heritage. In fact, at the same time as that symposium, a conference was held in Moscow of all the heads of the Moscow Patriarchate monasteries. There were probably over 1,000 monks and nuns present. Unsurprisingly, most of those heads of monasteries were in fact from Ukraine.
It is unfortunate that Mt. Athos has become something of a battleground between Constantinople and Moscow, but the aggressor there is clearly the Russian Church:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TazFheEE2Ik
No the aggressor is Patriarch Bartholomew and his American backers. American diplomats like Geoffrey Pyatt visited the holy mountain in 2018 in what was clearly an early effort to get the monasteries to back Patriarch Bartholomew’s plans for Ukraine.
Over the decades Patriarch Bartholomew with the backing of the Greek government have used violence to expel traditionalist oriented Monks. In 1992, four Russian monks were expelled through violence for refusing to commemorate the Patriarch.
The Patriarch’s repressive measures against the Monastery of Esphigmenou is well known. There is only one aggressor on Mount Athos and it is not the Russian Church.
Joseph,
If Constantinople had not taken money from the Czar in the late 1800s and early 1900s, in exchange for Russia to get their modern-day “foothold” on Mt. Athos that we see today (including St. Panteleimon monastery), there would have never been a symposium for you to attend in 2016…
Who is at fault for that? The Patriarchate of Constantinopole’s perennial “love of money” (serving that 2nd master)…back then it was Russian money…now it’s mostly Western money….So it’s actually Constantinople that is playing global “geopolitics” for a several centuries now, depending on where the wind blows…Constantinople is NOT a victim. From the moment you willingly sell yourself to the highest bidder, it is illogical to claim that there are “aggressors” involved…”spiritual prostitution” always has its ugly consequences…
By the way, you are also spewing propaganda by presenting the term “Kievan Rus” as something separate from the Moscow Patriarchate’s historical progression.
Markos, sure, Kievan Rus is part of the Moscow Patriarchate’s historical progression, and the Moscow Patriarchate is part of Ukraine’s historical progression also. Yet these are distinct histories.
Historically, Moscow has tried time and time again to subject the Ukrainian lands. Kievan forces fought against Russia for independence in 1708 at the Battle of Poltava. After Kiev’s defeat, Tsar Peter the Great established military rule, subjecting the Kievan Church to himself and his reforms through his Ober-Procurator. It was a general defeat of Orthodoxy for Ukraine. Ukraine then fought for independence from 1917 to 1921, eventually losing to the Bolsheviks, another defeat of Orthodoxy. The present war for independence has lasted almost four years, with those Ukrainian territories conquered by Russia now subsumed directly under the Moscow Patriarchate. Undeniably, there is both an historical drive for Ukrainian independence and also an historical drive for Russia’s subjection of Ukraine.
is it “Kievan forces in 1708”, or perhaps Polish / Lithuanian / Swedish (or even German) Uniate forces? It’s interesting that you are trying to invent an ethnicity out of nothingness… The word Ukraine = “Frontier lands”…of whom? Russia of course.
Let’s check some DNA, and go back to some real “ethnic origins”, before we start claiming that Ukraine is something different than what it really is..
Joseph,
You have no understanding about Mt. Athos or its main sources of income when you make a statement like that…keep doing some research. Pilgrims are negligible sources of income for the 20 main monasteries, although the smaller sketes and “cells” that are perpetually poor certainly benefit from the occasional pilgrim that finds his way through the forest to stop by. There were almost no Russian pilgrims between WW1 and the 1990s…and even then and after that, only a handful Russians actually had significant expendable income, and even then they always preferred to “invest” the overwhelming majority of their cash in St. Panteleimon monastery, which had originally been systematically overtaken by ethnic Russian monks during the reign of a corrupt Patriarch of Constantinople towards the end of the 19th century, a Patriarch who was gladly accepting “donations from the Czar” in exchange… Read the story of how the brotherhood of the Δανιηλαιοι came to be if you don’t believe me…
The only exceptions to “Russian money” being invested in other monastic communities (outside of St. Panteleimon) center around a handful of “famed workshops of iconography”, which did in fact charge “NYC Fifth Avenue prices” to Russians who unknowingly (or knowingly) were overspending with them. A handful of these “Mt. Athos iconography brand names” also deceived several parishes in the United States (GOARCH) over the last 30-40 years into severely overpaying for iconography (sometimes upwards of unfathomable 7-digit sums), and in some cases with a rather bizarre insistence of the parish priest himself for the parish council to go with the “expensive option”…but that’s a different discussion for another day…unless you want to start asking around on your own in the background…it won’t be too hard to find which GOARCH parishes did “business” with Mt. Athos “brand name iconographers” over the past 30 years…
I’ll also give you another hint…There is at least one iconographer I know personally in Greece that has witnessed an unfortunate practice where a handful of corrupt “monastics” order icons from Greek lay iconographers, and then resell them at a much higher price with a “made on Mt. Athos” label…This does not mean there are no honest iconographers on Mt. Athos…Thank God there are many honest monks, but you need to do your research before purchasing anything…
Again, that’s a discussion for another day, but as a more relevant example, why doesn’t GOARCH remind us how much the “iconography” at St. Nicholas Shrine at Ground Zero cost, and which Mt. Athos monastery painted it, and then check to see if that same monastery is in the list of monasteries that accepted Epiphanios with open arms? hint, hint, hint…yes, follow the money, but it’s definitely not Russian money this time, sir.
Joseph you are disgusting and you have just slandered 95% of the monks of the Holy Mountain. Not sure how many pieces of silver Black Bart puts in your filthy hands each month to cause your mouth to spill such filthy words. But the day when you will regret it is coming swiftly. Behold the bridegroom cometh in the middle of the night . . .
Signing a document that agrees to the 2016 “decisions of Crete” in the same mix with the 7 Ecumenical council decision is like agreeing to eat rotten, partially fermented, moldy, insect-infused fruit for desert after an exceptional meal, praising the chefs who served it, giving them a raving review for the “dessert”, and even ordering a second serving of it…
The “carrot on the stick” (bribe) in this case is to offer him a “titular bishop” desk job with a salary, sitting in the shadows of the Archdiocese with no real flock, power, or impact…
At times like these, a famous Mt. Athos quote comes to memory…”it’s better to be a monk in Paradise than a clergyman in Hell…” (referring to the risk of failure to properly navigated the magnified “spiritual traps, decisions and responsibilities” that clergy encounter in life)
And whoever doesn’t like that quote, there was another quote from Homeric times that applied to the fate of Achilles…”it’s better to live a short life and die with honor and glory, than a long life in obscurity” (compare to the spiritual dangers of a “spirit of cowardice” – πνευμα δειλιας in Christian times)… in our Christian era we can add the term “heavenly” in front of the term “glory”, because that’s exactly what the Martyrs and Confessors did…
Now, let’s see what Tychikos decides…
And, it’s better to wear the cap of a simple monk than be under the crown of a heresiarch.
Unsurprisingly, a group of “cell monks” of Mt. Athos, the very ones who would benefit financially from Russian pilgrims, wrote a scathing statement against the visit of the OCU and are calling for the Athonites who served with them to be excommunicated:
https://orthochristian.com/173385.html
These Athonites opposed the visit of the blasphemer Dimenko on the grounds that he is the embodiment of an evil and blasphemous institution both mocking and waging war against the true Ukrainian Orthodox Church.
There is no reason to think these Athonite monks are opposed to the OCU on financial grounds. The synods of most Orthodox Churches and significant numbers of clergy and laypeople stand in opposition to the OCU because it is a fake entity.
It has no valid ordinations or sacraments. It is propped up by anti Christian elements in Kiev and Washington. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church survives through the martyrdom of its clergy and faithful as the universal Church has from its very beginning.
The OCU will eventually collapse and Patriarch Bartholomew and its other supporters will stand condemned for colluding with worldly interests.
Well this explains it all. Why is no bishop actively fighting against this. I’m not talking about just in GOARCH but in all of Orthodoxy:
https://orthodoxtimes.com/archdiocesan-council-convened-in-new-york-focus-on-renewal-and-development/#google_vignette
“ The meeting was called to order by Secretary Nick Karacostas, who introduced Vice- President John Catsimatidis. Catsimatidis welcomed the members to New York City and stated that he is working to establish the Ecumenical Patriarch and the Pope as “equal in Christianity,” saying that we need to support our Church and religion in the U.S.”
Άτυχος ο Τυχικός από τους Πατριαρχικούς.
Ελπίζω στη συνέχεια να υπογράψει ορθόδοξη ομολογία πίστης.
Τον φάγανε τον άνθρωπο…
https://www.philenews.com/kipros/koinonia/article/1636462/nosilevete-se-nosokomio-tis-athinas-o-tichikos-ti-anaferi-o-iatros-tou-vinteo/