A Political Clash Over Ukraine Shakes Eastern Orthodox Unity

The Russian Orthodox Church on Monday officially broke communion with the Orthodox Church of Constantinople, whose patriarch has held the title “first among equals” for nearly a thousand years, following the East–West schism of 1054 — the schism that separated Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. If communion between Moscow and Constantinople is not reinstated, the schism would be the largest in nearly a millennium. Typically, questions of church are a purely ecclesiological matter, but in this case politics seems to have taken the reins of the discussion.