On September 23, Patriarch Bartholomew promised he would soon grant autocephaly for the creation of a new autocephalous church in the Ukraine, “because that is its right.” You can watch his speech on the Ecumenical Patriarchate’s Facebook page. He made the parallel to the autocephaly granted in 1998 to the Czech Lands and Slovaki, though it seems these churches were actually granted autocephaly by the Russian Orthodox Church as early as