First UOC-KP patriarch commemorated in Kyiv
A mourning rally for of the first patriarch of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Kyivan Patriarchate (UOC-KP), Volodymyr (Romaniuk), was held yesterday on Kyiv's St. Sophia Square.
According to Kommersant, about 40 people gathered near the patriarch’s grave. Among them were representatives of UNA-UNSO, who guarded the 1995 funeral procession, members of the association Tryzub and the Coalition of Orange Revolution Participants, and ordinary UOC-KP believers.
We remind that 16 years ago during Patriarch Volodymyr’s funeral on St. Sophia’s Square a mass brawl between the participants of the funeral procession and the police broke out because the UOC-KP refused to carry out the orders of the government to bury the patriarch at Baikove Cemetery. The patriarch was buried near the main entrance to St. Sophia’s Cathedral, and the events of July 18, 1995, became known as Black Tuesday.
“Not only Ukraine but the whole world was shocked by the events on St. Sophia’s Square, because outright bandits who worked in government incited the believers,” Oles Shevchenko, a national deputy of the first convocation, said yesterday at the gathering.
