Metropolitan Mefodii States Proclamation of Patriarchate of the UAOC Was Untimely
KYIV — For the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the Council of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (June 5-6, 1990), where the Kyivan Patriarchate and renewal of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Church (UAOC) were proclaimed, the head of the UAOC Metropolitan Mefodii (Kudriakov) presented his view on that historic event and his vision on the priority objectives for the Ukrainian church today. He noted that when proclaiming the patriarchate, the autocephalous movement made substantial mistakes, which must now be corrected. The proclamation in his opinion was hasty as it “left not many chances for recognition by Constantinople and other Orthodox churches.”
“Today, we are faced with two global objectives: overcoming the regionalism typical of our church today and the development of a new universal vision of the Kyivan Patriarchate and its mission in modern Ukraine. We should become the Kyivan Church not only by the formal name but by spirit,” stated Metropolitan Mefodii.
In an article for the Weekly Mirror, the head of the UAOC noted that “the way in which the new patriarchate was proclaimed unfortunately did not fit either the scope of the event or its significance in the modern Ukrainian Church history…The documents, passed by the council, look somewhat naïve today. One can see that they were written in an emotional time, sometimes without proper development, possibly by the laity of the initiators of the revival of the UAOC,” he explained.
At the same time he said that in 1990 Ukraine obtain a patriarch who “managed to retain the high idea of the patriarchate by relying only on his own forces.” However, according to Metropolitan Mefodii, Ukraine got the patriarch not the patriarchate.
“The claims of our church for the patriarchal status were grounded. But unfortunately the council documents of 1990 contain not a logical system of canonical argumentation but only passing mentions of some such arguments. For example, the statement of the apostolic origin of the Kyivan Church and its unique role in the processes of Christianization of eastern Europe,” reads the article.
In his analysis of the current status of affairs, the head of the UAOC states: “Something very strange has happened. The patriarchate which is supposed to unite the faithful of the West and East has artificially assumed a regional character. Despite its idea and name, it became viewed as a solely Galician church phenomenon. The social basis of the UAOC has been mostly the faithful of the three western Ukrainian regions.”
Metropolitan Mefgodii stressed that the hierarchs of the divided Ukrainian churches bear the responsibility not only “to honestly recognize the mistakes and problems but also to develop the ways to overcome them…pass a number of conceptual documents containing our joint interpretation of the Kyivan Patriarchate as the institute in the Ukrainian and whole universal church,”and temporarily give up the patriarchal status.
