Patriarch of Moscow Kirill (Gundyayev) sent greetings to the participants of the XVI Readings dedicated to the memory of Metropolitan of Lithuania and Vilnius Joseph (Semashko), who was one of the main initiators of the liquidation of the Greek Catholic Church (Uniate) in the territory of modern Belarus, Lithuania, and the northwestern part of Ukraine by forcibly joining it to the Russian Orthodox Church of the Russian Empire in 1839.
This was reported by the Telegram channel "Christians Against War."
According to him, "the fruits of the labors of His Beatitude Joseph have special significance for our Church today," as "the abolition of the Brest Union in 1839 completed a long path of restoring the unity of the Russian Orthodox Church and contributed to overcoming the destructive religious division of the people."
"The activities of Metropolitan Joseph, a prominent church hierarch, are a vivid example of how one person, possessing great spiritual strength, principledness, honesty, determination, and steadfastness of faith (2 Cor. 1:24), can bring hundreds of thousands of people back to the Truth and influence the destiny of an entire nation," he said.
As noted by the Telegram channel, these statements by the head of the Russian Orthodox Church may serve as ideological justification for the banning of structures of the Greek Catholic Church in the territories occupied by the Russian Federation. For example, on December 7, it became known that the Russian occupying authorities banned the activities of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in the occupied territory of the Zaporizhzhia region. The order was signed by the head of the occupation military-civil administration of the Zaporizhzhia region, Yevhen Balytskyi.
It is worth reminding that on March 8-10, 1946, the so-called pseudo-council took place on St. George's Hill in Lviv, during which, by Stalin's order, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church was liquidated. The pseudo-council legitimized repression against Greek Catholics; thousands of priests and believers were sent into exile and thrown into prisons. The UGCC was forcibly annexed to the Russian Church.