Archbishop Ihor (Isichenko) of UAOC Comments on Situation in UOC

If any parts of the divided Ukrainian Church unite in one structure today according to the existing principles, it would not create a one local Church but it would create one problem. So stated Archbishop Ihor (Isichenko) of Kharkiv and Poltava of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, Professor of V. Karamzin Kharkiv National University on 23 February, within the framework of the Project “From the book to the goal” of Iryna Farion.

“Let us remember the experiments of President Kravchuk. The only way, defended today by us, Archbishop Makarii of Lviv of UAOC and me, from the time of death of Patriarch Dymytrii, is the way commanded by Patriarch Dymytrii himself, namely, to return to the canonical state of Church life, the state before 1686. This way has already been passed by our Churches in diaspora, the Churches in Canada and USA. Our challenge is not to avoid that way, but to join it and to restore the normal canonical life of all the Orthodox community of Ukraine under the umbrella of the Ecumenical Patriarch, and then, there will be no problems regarding the establishment of one jurisdiction,” noted Archbishop Ihor.

With respect to the present situation in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Moscow Patriarchate connected with the illness of Metropolitan Volodymyr, Archbishop Ihor stressed that we are witnesses of a kind of a putsch of the Moscow Patriarchate. “And when the Church of the Moscow Patriarchate realizes all the insidiousness of the political trap, where it is now, I think it will urge a part of this Church to look for ways out and ways to join UAOC or UOC-KP and then, the process, started by our Churches in diaspora, will take place,” said the hierarch. He avoided a conversation about unification between UAOC and UOC-KP, reported ZIK.