Today, by an open vote of 135 votes to 16, the Epiphany parish in Bergen, Norway, became the first in Northern Europe to withdraw from the Moscow Patriarchate. The majority of its parishioners are immigrants from Ukraine.
Fr Dmytro Ostanin, the rector of the community, wrote about this on his Facebook page.
As RISU previously reported, the Epiphany community of the Russian Orthodox Church in Bergen planned to vote for breaking ties with the Moscow Patriarchate.
Priest Dmytro Ostanin, who is from Ukraine, collected enough signatures to put the issue to a vote. Ostanin hopes and believes that the community will support this proposal.
"I hope that the community members will realize the importance of this decision. We are now on the brink of war in Europe, and we must be prepared. Supporting Moscow is harmful to the people, to Norway, and to our security,” Fr. Ostanin told the Norwegian newspaper Vårt Land.
You can learn more about the preparation of the meeting and the reasons for this decision in the RISU publication.