Dozens of men braved the cold and jumped into the waters of the Bosphorus to grab a cross flung by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, the spiritual leader of most Orthodox Christians worldwide. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and Ukrainian Metropolitan Epifaniy stood by during the traditional event on January 6 which followed a mass in Istanbul’s St. George’s Cathedral where Bartholomew presented the head of the Ukrainian church with a decree granting it independence from the Russian Orthodox Church — a historic split strongly opposed by Moscow, reported RFERL.
