Ecumenical Patriarch question

ArmyMatt said:

and those areas that are under him, yes.

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There are also churches under him which are not recognized as canonical by most Orthodox churches, for example in Estonia and Ukraine.

The current Greek Orthodox Archbishop of North America when Metropolitan of Bursa authored a paper that made the absurd claim that only the EP could grant or rescind autocephaly, the former is false (but its why the OCA’s autocephalous status remains unrecognized by the EP after 55 years) and the latter is completely false.

Fortunately the EP also contains Mount Athos and the monasteries established by the saintly Elder Ephraim of Arizona, who through their prayers will protect the Church of Constantinople and her faithful even if the Archbishop of North America is made the next Patriarch.

RileyG said:

So he’s only has authority in Constantinople if I understand correctly?

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No, his authority is limited to those areas under Constantinopolitan jurisdiction, which include all areas of Greece that free of Turkish subjugation after the initial revolution, including Thessaloniki, Crete, Mount Athos, Patmos, and most of the islands of the Aegean Sea, and also what is left of the church in Turkey, Constantinople and Asia Minor (except there are virtually no Greeks left there due to the forced population exchange; indeed even the last church in Bursa (historically known as Chalcedon) closed when the current Archbishop of North America was Metropolitan of Bursa, leaving just those churches in Constantinople, with most remaining ethnic Greeks in Turkey living in the Phanar district of Constantinople (a complaint is that Phanariot Greeks are over-represented in the Holy Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate vs. people from Greece, Athonite monks or people from autonomous churches under the omophorion of the EP, such as the Church of Finland, and the EP’s Estonian Church which was initially uncanonical, resulting in a rupture in EP-MP communion in 1996, but that issue, unlike the present issue in Ukraine, was resolved with the EP and MP agreeing to parallel jurisdictions.