"Patriarch is the one praying for peace just as his deputy-deacon is a ‘fighter against politics in the Church’," - the OCU responds to Novinsky

The spokesman of the OCU Synod wrote about this in his blog on the "Glavkom" website.

"It was a bit strange to read such statements in an interview with Ukrayinska Pravda of a deacon oligarch attaching labels on the Orthodox Church of Ukraine. Especially when he talks about a "political organization with a religious name."

Well, it's like hearing instructions from Putin's godfather about what is real Ukrainian patriotism like, or from the conglomerate "112-Zik – NewsOne" the reflections on the issue of honest journalism.

A Russian politician with a Ukrainian passport, a person involved in the case of interference of figures of the Yanukovych regime in church life in order to get rid of the late Metropolitan Volodymyr (Sabodan), a devoted adept and propagandist of the "Russian World", a deputy and billionaire covered by a deacon's sticharion, "an Orthodox s.o.b." – is he in the position to attach labels to a church that has more than 1000 years of history, of which more than 100 years it had fought for autocephaly?", wrote the Archbishop of the OCU.

Yevstratiy (Zorya) calls the Moscow Patriarchate in Ukraine an anomaly that arose in violation of the canons and solely because of the political coercion of the Tsarist government in 1686.

"This is also confirmed by the decision of the Ecumenical Patriarch. But the Orthodox Church of Ukraine is a real Ukrainian local church, originating the sermon of the Apostle Andrew the First-Called, from the Oskold and Volodymyr's Baptism of Rus-Ukraine. Even these facts are enough to understand where the local church is and where the "organization with a religious name" is," the hierarch notes.

Regarding Noivnsky's statement that Patriarch Kirill prays for peace in Ukraine, Archbishop Yevstratiy rhetorically asked:

"But for what kind of peace does he pray? The one of the "Russian World"? How can there be a sincere prayer for peace if Kirill himself and his subordinates in Ukraine, including this deacon, still do not recognize the fact of Russian aggression? How can a real prayer be based on Moscow's lies about the "civil war" and "internal conflict"?

In the end, the opinions from the interview actually say more about the "inner kitchen" of the MP in Ukraine. Transferring certain statements to the OCU, this person reveals his own worldview, in which the Church is an instrument of politics, lies about his own and others are a good thing if "for the benefit of the cause", and the canons are like a driving rod, turned in any direction as necessary."