Debates About the Right to Convoke Pan-Orthodox Council in the End of the 19th and the First Half of 20th Centuries

Abstract

The author examines the question of who has the right to convoke a Pan-Orthodox Council with references to contemporary historical circumstances. He proves that this right never exclusively belonged to the Patriarch of Constantinople, technically the first among equals, and this was accepted by some among Greeks. The attempt to grant this right to the Patriarch of Constantinople stems from the situation shaped just after the fall of the Russian Empire when a battle for primacy started to unfold. On the other hand, the idea of a collective convocation of a future Pan-Orthodox Council developed during the first half of the twentieth century. In spite of this, representatives of the Orthodox Churches agreed in 1968 that the right to convoke the hypothetical council did indeed belong to the Patriarch of Constantinople but always with prior agreement of the chief hierarchs of other autocephalous churches. The author shows that this decision was reached as a type of temporary compromise solution rather than a logical conclusion of previous discussions.