La canonizzazione di Cirillo Loukaris da parte del patriarcato di Alessandria

The canonization of the patriarch Cyril III Loukaris (then Cyril of Constantinople) by the Greek-Orthodox Patriarchy, in 2009, could appear surprising, not only for the fact that this 17th century bishop was considered a follower of Calvinism, but, above all, because his doctrine and belief were condemned by three pan-Orthodox synods organized in Constantinople (1638, 1642) and in Iaşi (Moldavia, 1642). This paper aims to analyze the requisites on which Loukaris’ sanctification was based on, in the light of official documents (patriarchal and synodal Act of canonization, Report of the Metropolitan bishop Macario of Kenya at the patriarchal Synod, Life of the new saint and liturgical Officiation). Those requisites are: his pastoral zeal (expressed through the commitment for the reform of morality and for the intellectual and spiritual growth of the clergy), his defense of orthodoxy and his violent death at the hands of the Turkish, assimilated to martyrdom. For what concerns the main point of the debated patriarch’s Confession of Faith (of Calvinist type), Greek-Orthodox scholars who supported the possibility of Loukaris’ canonization proposed two solutions. For some of them, it was a falsification, made by Loukaris’ enemies in order to depose him; according to others, it would have been an autonomous initiative of the Calvinists from Geneva, which would had been disowned by the patriarch only informally and not officially. Nevertheless, the title of orthodoxy protector is bestowed to him because of his tireless fight against the aggressiveness of Catholic missions in the Orient, and, above all, against the so called phenomenon of the Uniate, which was arising exactly in that period in the Polish-Lithuanian Rus’.