Translated from the Russian version available here.
We turn to you with great joy, fraternally embracing Your Beatitude in the Lord.
We received and carefully read Your beloved Beatitude’s letter no. 100 from December 31 of last year, in which you request a synaxis of the primates of the Orthodox churches in order to resolve the problem in the Ukrainian Church.
In response, we inform you that after four Orthodox churches, without reason from an ecclesiological and theological point of view, refused to be present during the work of the Great and Holy Council, for which there is no excuse– and your ancient church was one of them– the Ecumenical Patriarchate has good reason to refrain from such a meeting at the Pan-Orthodox level, which would be useless inasmuch as it would only lead to agreement that the participants are in disagreement with each other.
The Great and Holy Church of Christ, looking in love and self-sacrifice, without self-interest or pressure, with the sole aim of the unity of the Ukrainian people and ending the separation and schism in the assembly of millions of believers, in the embrace of the canonical Church, after they had been unjustly outside of her, following the traditions and canons of the Church, awarded autocephaly to the Church of Ukraine in the same manner that internal self-administration was received by all the other newly-established autocephalous churches, which were approved by the same method without an Orthodox Council or general discussion with the sister autocephalous churches and accepted in their position by all the churches, and the names of their new primates were added to the diptychs.
And so we ask the Founder of the Church and Her Primate, that His grace and the love of the Father and Holy Spirit be with you, with the most reverend hierarchs, with the clergy and believing people in the Church of Antioch in the trial. We conclude with immense fraternal love of the Lord with great respect.
Your beloved brother in Christ,
Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew
Orthodox Synaxis 