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The official web-site of the Ecumenical Patriarchate: www.ec-patr.org.
According to this site, Ecumenical Patriarch is "the primary spiritual leader of the Orthodox Christian world".
It is prominent for me that Patr. Bartholomew was born in Febraury 29, 1940. February 29 is also the birthday of my mother.
Vincent Boland ("Financial Times", August 26, 2005) made such a lead to his interview with Ecumenical Patriarch:
"His position is not universally accepted; <...> there is intense rivalry between Bartholomew and Alexei II of Moscow, whom the Russian church - and perhaps the Russian government - would claim to be Bartholomew�s equal (they are involved in a fierce battle for the allegiance of the Orthodox Church in Ukraine). And since the Orthodox Church is organised more along national lines than the Roman Catholic Church, there is frequent dispute among the patriarchy. Still, Bartholomew is regarded, especially in Greece and the Anglo-Saxon world, as the leader of the world�s 300 million Orthodox Christians, and he has the mien and bearing of a man of influence."
"The Orthodox Church is organized more along national lines than the Roman Catholic Church", - Boland stated. He is absolutely precise theoretically. Historically, the situation is more interesting. National divisions are less prominent for many people now than ideological divisions. I am not afraid of the word "ideological." It helps to know the truth: unity doesn't mean similarity. There are liberals and conservatives, left and right. Unity of faith must embrace all of them. The conflict between Constantinople and Moscow is to some extent the conflict between normal Church, where people of different views share common faith, and the Church which is not the Church of the Russians, but the Church of the Russian Government. The Moscow Patriarchy now is the Church of Moscow Kremlin and its empyreal politics.
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