The first text in the ‘Analytics’ section of our website is a text by Professor Volodymyr Bureha devoted to the analysis of the Catholic document ‘The Bishop of Rome: Primacy and Synodality in the Ecumenical Dialogues and in the Responses to the Encyclical Ut Unum Sint’, published in 2024. In this analysis, the document is examined from the perspective of the theological and canonical tradition of the Orthodox Church.
In particular, the author refers to important documents of the Joint International Commission for Orthodox-Catholic Theological Dialogue, adopted in Ravenna in 2007 and in Chieti in 2016, as well as to documents of the St. Irenaeus Joint Orthodox-Catholic Working Group. The paradigm of unity here is the so-called ‘structured unity’ that existed between East and West in the first millennium.
The analysis examines the following key issues:
- The judicial authority of the Bishop of Rome, which derives from the decrees of the Council of Sardica (343). Its practical application today is the authority of Constantinople as the first among the existing Orthodox sees in matters of clergy appeals. It was on this basis that the status of the leaders of the Ukrainian Orthodox jurisdictions, Filaret (Denysenko) and Makariy (Maletych), was restored. This also concerns the current clergy of the Russian Orthodox Church, who were being deprived of their ecclesiastical rank for their anti-war stance.
- Distinction between the ministry of the Bishop of Rome as head of the Roman Catholic Church and his special ministry in the Global Church. This distinction lies between ecclesiastical unity in the legal and sacramental spheres, with priority in interconfessional relations being given to the latter, i.e., to communion in the sacraments.
The text of Volodymyr Bureha’s review in Ukrainian can be read on our website in the ‘Analytics’ section – https://www.academic-initiative.org.ua/analityka/ and at the link https://www.academic-initiative.org.ua/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/07_01_Yepyskop_Rymu.pdf
