Metropolitan Pavlo: Ukrainians Should Forget About Autocephaly

Metropolitan Pavlo of Vyshhorod and Chornobyl of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Moscow Patriarchate said in an interview to Weekly.ua on March 7 that Ukrainians do not accept autocephaly.

"We are the unified Russian Church. We are indivisible. Our Patriarch bears the title of the Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus. We constitute the Russian Orthodox Church together with the Russian and Belarusian Churches.

"Today, the word 'autocephaly' must be forgotten. People in the east of the country do not accept it. And those who remain faithful to the Russian Orthodox Church in the west have not transferred to the Uniates and will not accept autocephaly either. We know how frightened the people are by the seizure of churches in the beginning of the 1990s. The Crimea, Luhansk, Dnipropetrovsk, Kharkiv and Sumy Regions oppose autocephaly. If individual persons seek it, they should listen to the majority," said Metropolitan Pavlo.