Read the Kyiv Post’s Honesty History series published on June 15, 2018: Ukraine’s Orthodox Church battles for independence
Read the Kyiv Post’s editorial published on Oct. 19, 2018: Bad Faith
Ukrainian Orthodox churches are increasingly switching from the Russia-aligned Moscow Patriarchate to the newly formed Orthodox Church of Ukraine.
Altogether, around 340 parishes of the former Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate have switched, according to Andriy Yurash, director of the Ukrainian Culture Ministry’s Religious Affairs and Nationalities Department.
But, in many cases, the transition has not been finalized. “So far, not all parishes have received completed legal documents,” Yurash told Ukraine’s Channel 5 on Feb. 22. However, in all cases, “a meeting of the religious community took place” and “the process was witnessed.”
Yurash expects more parishes to follow suit in coming months and says more would have abandoned the Moscow Patriarchate earlier had there not been “external factors,” implying obstruction from the Kremlin-loyal Moscow Patriarchate.
“I am convinced that the process is restrained artificially and in the coming months, I think, we will have much more dynamic tendencies,” Yurash said. “Why do I refer to artificial restraint? Because there are many external mechanisms that have been used and that are aimed at not allowing the maximum number of parishes to join the Orthodox Church of Ukraine. On the one hand, external factors try to convince the Ukrainian clergy in the parishes that other churches do not recognize (the Orthodox Church of Ukraine) because only Constantinople has recognized it, and the churches are told from the outside that there are no processes for unifying and the parishes don’t want to join, so there for you don’t have to recognize it. In a word, we need to break this circle from the inside.”
The Orthodox Church of Ukraine was established on Dec. 15 in St. Sophia’s Cathedral in Kyiv, during a unification council that included several churches: the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyiv Patriarchate, the Ukrainian Autocephalous Church, and some Moscow Patriarchate clergy.
Read President Petro Poroshenko’s Dec. 15, 2018 speech “You are the creators of history” and the Kyiv Post’s Dec. 16, 2018 story: “Religious, political worlds react to creation of Ukrainian Orthodox Church”
The unified church then received formal status when Bartholomew I, the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople granted it a canonical decree of independence from Moscow on Jan. 6, 2019, the eve of Orthodox Christmas in Ukraine. Since then, a transition has launched, with some Moscow Patriarchate parishes switching to the Ukrainian church.
However, Moscow Patriarchate officials are not entirely in agreement on the number of parishes that have joined the church or how peaceful the process has been. Archpriest Oleksander Bakhov, head of the church’s legal department, calls the 340 figure inaccurate.
The Orthodox Church of Ukraine was only formally registered on Jan. 30, and before Feb. 20 there was no mechanism for religious communities to change churches, according to Bakhov. Additionally, the necessary procedure lasts three months. “Where could those 300 religious communities transfer, if first there was no place to go, and now the registration procedure itself has just started? In fact, we can say that these are fake statements,” Bakhov said on Feb. 21 during a news briefing.
According to Archbishop Clement of Nizhyn and Pryluky, head of the Moscow Patriarchate’s information and education department, the real number of cases when a religious community decided to join Orthodox Church of Ukraine is smaller: 36 of 12,000 existing parishes. They allege pressure. “After the Patriarchate of Constantinople issued (the decree of independence), the authorities began to put insane pressure on communities of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (of the Moscow Patriarchate) to force a change of confession,” said Clement.
According to Bakhov, often local authorities — not local religious communities — vote to transfer the parish. “Wherever ‘peaceful’ transitions to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine are held, we can see representatives of the (local) administrations and the authorities,” Clement claimed. Said Bakhov: “They are trying, through intimidation or aggressive conversations with religious people, to force them to change their church.”
One such alleged raider attack occurred in the village of Zhydychyn in Ukraine’s Volyn Oblast, according to Moscow church officials. Then, on Feb. 22, a group of “raiders” reportedly broke into the St. Nicholas Church and seized the building, according to the Moscow Patriarchate diocese. The church’s priest, Roman Heleta, claimed that in the confrontation during the raid, his wife and mother were injured. The next day, the mother’s husband, Volodymyr Heleta, fired four gunshots at a group of people guarding the church.
But EuroMaidan Press, citing a Feb. 18, 2019, press briefing by Vasyl Hrytsak, head of the Secret Service of Ukraine, or SBU, wrote that Hrytsak warned of a Russian plan to destabilize Ukraine by playing the religious card. According to the plan, churches in union with the Moscow Patriarchate which declined to join the independent Orthodox Church of Ukraine were to be set ablaze by provocateurs posing as Ukrainian nationalists. According to the SBU, 20 churches were targeted but most attacks prevented by the service, Hrytsak said.
Ivan Sydor, press secretary of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, said the church’s position is that “it’s their right” to remain in the Moscow Patriarchate if the congregation so chooses.
“Ukraine is a poly-confessional country. We have many different faiths. Each confession has the right to exist. If a (parish) wants to join the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, it writes a request. It would be wrong if we didn’t listen to their request. There are those parishes that remain (in the Moscow Patriarchate). And we are not going and don’t plan to influence them in any way.”
Sydor said there are many cases in which local parishes want to switch, but the priests don’t or want to wait until May, which is when Ukraine will know who is elected president.
“The church in which the priest serves, regardless of (its patriachate), belongs not to him, but to the residents of the village or city,” Sydor said. “If the community wants to join the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, the priest should follow the decision of the community.”
He says that sometimes 95 percent of a village is for joining the Ukrainian church, but the priest is against, and that’s where conflicts can erupt. “Sometimes the priest calls his people, other priests come, and then some incomprehensible things can happen.”
He also said the Ukrainian church is “totally fine with the Moscow Patriarchate remaining” in Ukraine, but believes it should be called the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine to make it clear that it is a Russian church.
