THE SYNODAL-CANONICAL TOMOS OF THE ECUMENICAL PATRIARCHATE OF CONSTANTINOPLE ON 13 NOVEMBER 1924: REASONS AND CIRCUMSTANCES OF ITS APPEARANCE AND CONSEQUENCES FOR THE ORTHODOX CHURCH IN UKRAINE (To the 100th anniversary of the signing of the document)

Abstract

November 13, 2024 marks the 100th anniversary of the signing of the Synodal-Canonical Tomos of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople on granting autocephaly to the Polish Orthodox Church. The article is devoted to the analysis of those circumstances in the Second Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (1918–1939), which led to the receipt by the Orthodox Church in Poland of the Synodal-Canonical Tomos of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of November 13, 1924 and, with the assistance of the Polish state government, to withdraw from the jurisdiction of the Moscow Patriarchate headed by St. Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Tikhon (Belavin). The activities of the heads of the Orthodox Church in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth under the jurisdiction of the Moscow Patriarchate, Metropolitans George (Yuri) (Yaroshevsky) and Dionysius (Valedynskyi) during this period have been little researched due to the lack of documentary sources. The fate of the document on the granting of autocephaly by the Patriarchate of Constantinople with the participation of the leaders of this Church in the 1920s is still unknown. It is unclear how in 1948 this Tomos ceased to be an act document for the Polish Autocephalous Orthodox Church and the Moscow Patriarchate issued its own decision on the autocephaly of the Polish Church in the form of an extract from the minutes of the meeting of the Holy Synod. The study of the activities of the Patriarchs of Constantinople in the conditions of the policy of building a secular state by the President of Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1923–1938), is difficult for research. A separate problem is the coverage of the reaction of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, led by Metropolitan Vasyl Lypkivskyi in Soviet Ukraine, to the appearance of Tomos on November 13, 1924.