In his small redbrick cathedral in west London, Fr Bohdan Matwijczuk is keeping an eye on the calendar. It’s not the usual round of saints’ days that is preoccupying him but the fact that on 28 July Ukrainians and Russians will honour the 1,030th anniversary of the “Baptism of Kiev Rus” – the mass baptism of Prince Vladimir of Kiev, his sons and boyars that Christians celebrate as the start of the faith in both lands.

Fr Bohdan hopes that the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew I (pictured), the “first among equals” in the Orthodox world, will use this anniversary to issue a tomos, or decree proclaiming the ecclesiastical independence, or autocephaly, of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Others expect the earliest it may come is August, when the synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate meets.