Kyiv Patriarchate is de facto the state church today, says Metropolitan Oleksandr Drabynko
The UOC-MP was previously the state church in Ukraine, and now this status has been taken over by the Kyivan Patriarchate.
Such an opinion was expressed in an interview to People In by Metropolitan Oleksandr Drabynko of Pereyaslav-Khmelnytsky and Vyshneve of the UOC-MP.
"One should not think that Ukrainian Orthodoxy has cured itself of the idea of a “state church”. In Ukraine, it is not accepted to refuse state preferences. There was a time when the UOC was in fact the “state church”. After 2014, the situation has changed, and the state church today de facto is the Kyiv Patriarchate,” he said.
"It is sad. It is sad that the Orthodox of all jurisdictions and branches have not yet apprehended the signs of time in which we live,” added the hierarch.
According to the Metropolitan of the UOC (MP), the Orthodox faithful cannot become accustomed to responsibility and, therefore, are looking for support from the state.
“The age of Emperor Constantine is over. There is no Roman Empire nor an Orthodox emperor in Russia. And the idea of the “Orthodox empire” (or in more modern terms: “Orthodox civilization”) still defines the consciousness of the Orthodox. We cannot get accustomed to responsibility. We still need the state, state support ... in order to be ourselves, in order to carry out a mission that was peculiar of the Church from the early days of its existence,” Metropolitan Oleksandr Drabynko said.
