Patriarch Filaret: Independent Ukraine Not Possible Without Independent Church
During his recent visit to Bukovyna Region, Patriarch Filaret of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Kyivan Patriarchate (UOC-KP) expressed an opinion that an independent autocephalous Church will be established in Ukraine only when the Ukrainian state becomes strong and that the Orthodox clergy should make efforts to ensure it happens as soon as possible.
He stated during his visit: “If there is the state, there is the Church!”
“The establishment of the Ukrainian state is the condition for the establishment of one Ukrainian Orthodox Church. For no Orthodox state can last without a unified spiritual foundation, that is the Church. All the states, which arose after the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire, Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia, Romania, established their states simultaneously with the establishment of the independent autocephalous Churches,” stressed the patriarch. The hierarch noted that the ideas of the establishment of the autocephaly and state independence of Ukraine have the same opponents.
“That is why Moscow struggles to subordinate the Ukrainian Church. To prevent Ukraine from being an independent state. For it understands well that if there is no independent Church, there will be no independent state. For it will easily subordinate it then. And as they cannot own the whole Ukrainian Church today, they have divided it. And granted it the status of an independent and self-ruled one. But they intend to deprave it even of that when the new patriarch is elected,” he explained.
“In the beginning, the authorities began to do everything to drag the parishes and churches of the Kyivan Patriarchate to the Moscow Patriarchate. But the Church rose against it, the citizens, public organizations, political parties rose, the world, America, Europe interfered. Therefore, the attempt to liquidate the Kyivan Patriarchate was not successful. And now we have normal relations with the president. Normal relations with the local authorities. In particular, in Bukovyna,” said Patriarch Filaret.
