• Home page
  • News
  • UOC-MP has powerful forces consciously opposed to autocephaly"- Andriy Yurash...

UOC-MP has powerful forces consciously opposed to autocephaly"- Andriy Yurash

02.05.2018, 09:52
There is no unity in the church environment in Ukraine: in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which is associated with the Moscow Patriarchate, there are very powerful forces that are consciously opposing autocephaly.

There is no unity in the church environment in Ukraine: in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which is associated with the Moscow Patriarchate, there are very powerful forces that are consciously opposing autocephaly.

 

Andriy Yurash religious scholar, director of the Department for Religious Affairs and Nationalities of the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine, said it on the air of the TV show "Drozdov" on ZIK TV channel.

 

The guest of the show noted that Patriarch Bartholomew clearly stated - he needed a clear position of political power, which is why the President wrote a letter and asked the parliament to support the appeal to the patriarch; Bartholomew also needed to understand that there is a large group of clergy in Ukraine who wants to obtain autocephaly, and therefore the signatures of the whole episcopate of the UOC-Kyivan Patriarchate, as well as the UAOC, were collected.

 

“But there is one problem - in Ukraine there is no unity in the ecclesial environment. There are very powerful forces in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which are associated with the Moscow Patriarchate, who are consciously opposed to autocephaly. They are the ecclesiastical jurisdiction that, being subject to Moscow, through the Russian Orthodox Church, the Moscow Patriarchate, is associated with other church Orthodox structures in the world, but not as an independent, local Church, but as part of a local Russian Church. That is, it is a local one, but not as a Ukrainian, but as a Russian Church, and this must be clearly understood. They and the numerous clergy position themselves as the only Church that has the right to declare, to decide and to offer something on the part of the Orthodox community,” the religious scholar emphasized and added that this issue should be perceived quietly.

 

Andriy Yurash reminded that in 2008, when Patriarch Bartholomew came to Ukraine, he proposed to recognize the Ukrainian Church in the status of the Metropolis and at the initial stages to grant it a semi-autonomous status, and not autocephaly. “Already now they do not even raise this question in Constantinople," said Andriy Yurash.

 

The guest of the show believes that "Ukraine has developed the essentially problematic level and plane.” Andriy Yurash reminded how in the 90's the Orthodox were divided into three jurisdictions - the UOC (MP), the UOC-KP, and the UAOC. “Anyone who did not want autocephaly, said that it could not exist, because there is no unity,” said the guest of the program.

 

According to him, initially the UOC-KP and the UAOC, developing "from scratch", were losing to the third jurisdiction, which is subordinated to Moscow, but now they have become powerful.

 

“And now the question has become so clear to everyone, and in Constantinople, including that it is impossible to further postpone the solution to this question for a sole reason that there is separation,” says Andriy Yurash.

 

As reported, on April 19, the Ukrainian Parliament approved a resolution to support the appeal of the President of Ukraine to the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew on bestowal of the Tomos of autocephaly on the Orthodox Church in Ukraine.