Ukraine can’t reclaim territory annexed by Russia or held by its proxies – but it’s increasingly likely to deprive its larger neighbor of something arguably as valuable: Its power over Ukraine’s Orthodox Christian believers, and with it Moscow’s claim to a central role in eastern Christianity.
Gatherings of top clerics affiliated with the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople aren’t usually of political interest. Patriarch Bartholomew I, the distant heir of the heads of the Byzantine church, isn’t the Eastern Orthodox equivalent of the Pope. As first among equals, he plays a symbolic rather than an organizational role.
