Earlier on Saturday, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said that a tomos of autocephaly was expected to be received from the Patriarch of Constantinople in early January.
"The Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew invited the Most Blessed Epiphany [Dumenko] to serve the great Epiphany holiday and to give him the tomos of the new sister autocephalous church," a spokesman said.
The spokesman reiterated that the new church structure would be called "the new Orthodox Autocephalous Church of Ukraine," with "Metropolitan" Epiphany as its primate.
Earlier in the day, a "unification council" was held in Kiev, at which the "metropolitan" of the non-canonical church structure, Epiphany Dumenko, was elected head of the "new church." According to Ukrainian media, only two bishops of the canonical UOC-MP participated in the council. The UOC-MP refused to participate in this event.
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The Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) said the canonical meaning of the "council" in Kiev was insignificant, and the possibility of recognizing Epiphany in the Orthodox world was a task "hardly possible to fulfil."
The Moscow Patriarchate calls the situation around the autocephaly the "legalization of schism," saying that it would have catastrophic consequences and would affect millions of Christians in Ukraine and other countries, and has already broken the Eucharistic communion with the Patriarchate of Constantinople.
