The Council of Bishops of the UOC (OCU), which was held on May 24, 2022, reached out to the UOC-MP with a series of proposals.
The text of the Appeal to the UOC-MP was published on the official website of the OCU. It offers:
1. Start an official dialogue without any preliminary conditions. Currently, nothing but subjective reluctance on the part of the UOC-MP can explain the lack of dialogue.
2. At the suggestion of the OCU, the UOC-MP should withdraw the decision to sever communication with the Ecumenical Patriarchate and a number of local Churches, as well as follow the example of the Serbian Patriarchate to comply with the decision of the Ecumenical Patriarchate to recognize the canonicity of the hierarchy of the OCU. The current lack of agreement on matters of jurisdiction should not create obstacles to concelebration and unity in the Eucharist.
3. The OCU urged the clergy and faithful of the UOC-MP to follow the Tomos of Autocephaly, which stipulates that all dioceses, monasteries, parishes and other Orthodox Church institutions should be under the jurisdiction of the Autocephalous Orthodox Church of Ukraine.
"The existence of the jurisdiction of the Moscow Patriarchate in Ukraine, like any other method that provides for the existence of Orthodox church structures in our state separate from the OCU, is a canonical anomaly, a violation that must be addressed sooner or later. The Unification Council was held in 2018, and the Orthodox Church of Ukraine received the Tomos of Autocephaly, so everyone who wants to adhere to the canonical order should not look for any alternative, but unite with it. The Ecumenical Patriarchate does not intend and will not create any alternative jurisdiction on the canonical territory of the OCU," the OCU hierarchs note.
4. The Council of the OCU urged the UOC-MP to support bringing the Russian Patriarch Kirill to canonical responsibility and depriving him of the patriarchal throne for spreading heretical ethnophyletic teaching based on the Russian World ideology, granting "blessing" to Russian troops for the war in Ukraine, which continues to cause destruction and numerous victims, as well as for provoking schism in the Church, in particular through the creation of the "dioceses of the Russian Orthodox Church" on the canonical territory of the Patriarchate of Alexandria.