Lubomyr Husar: Russian church has separate history

The Moscow Patriarchate wishes to have a major impact on the entire church in Ukraine (in Ukraine today there are for major churches - the Ukrainain Orthodox Church-Moscow Patriarchate (UOC-MP), the UOC-Kyivan Patriarchate, Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church and Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church), said the former head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church Cardinal Lubomyr (Husar) in an interview to Channel 1+1.

According to Cardinal Lubomyr, the Moscow Patriarchate is trying to take the history of the Church of Kyiv. "There is no doubt that Christian missionaries traveled also to the territories that today make up the Russian state, but also to different countries and parts of the world. And it does not give this, lets say, daughter-church, the church, which originated from the missionary work of some other church, in my opinion, the right to take the history of the mother church," said the hierarch.

He said that "we are the mother church, and we are very pleased that our ancestors went to different parts of the Slavic world to preach the word of God." He stressed that the Church of Kyiv, even if separated, has its own history, its own saints. "The Russian church has its own history, its own saints. It is not the part of the history of Kyiv, it’s the history of Moscow."