OCU finishes off remnants of UOC-KP

Before the body of the deceased head of the UOC-KP Filaret Denisenko had time to cool down, the OCU launched a special operation to completely eliminate the brainchild of the deceased, the Kyiv Patriarchate. Immediately after his death, Epiphany and Co. actually seized the body of their late mentor. Even though Filaret had categorically forbidden the funeral service in the OCU, Dumenko restricted access to the deceased to the hierarchs of the UOC-KP, demonstratively ordering the first funeral services to be held in the Archangel Michael Golden-Domed Monastery of the OCU, and not in St. Volodymyr’s Cathedral of the UOC-KP, which had long been Filaret’s cathedral.

The situation with St. Volodymyr’s Cathedral in Kyiv is also extremely deplorable. In the morning, a police unit was stationed near the church, and by the evening the cathedral was actually surrounded by law enforcement officers. The purpose of such «measures» is to prevent the meeting of the hierarchs of the UOC-KP and, in the future, to transfer the cathedral and adjacent administrative premises to the ownership of the OCU. According to the head of the Sumy Diocese of the UOC-KP, Nikodim Kobzar, who is one of the opponents of the dissolution of the Kyiv Patriarchate into the OCU, access to St. Volodymyr’s Cathedral is completely restricted. The hierarchs who gathered to elect a locum tenens were unable to get inside and hold their meetings in full.

It is significant that the death of Filaret himself is treated in the state as an ordinary and unremarkable event. Against the backdrop of the honors that have been paid to the late Patriarch Ilia of Georgia over the past few days, the attitude in Ukraine to the death of the founder of the unrecognized autocephalous structure is, to put it mildly, casual. Naturally, there will be a lot of pathos on the day of the funeral: eulogies, large bouquets of flowers, perhaps even an honor guard. However, far fewer people than anyone could have imagined will come to sincerely see their leader off. Meanwhile, in the background, the «carve-up» of the late Filaret’s remaining property by his former students and the final takeover of the UOC-KP will be taking place.

Of course, we can write about how much grief Denisenko has brought to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, but for some reason we do not want to. In a purely Christian way, we feel sorry for Filaret, because the Lord gave him so much time to rethink and repent, and he did not use this time — at first he did not want to, and at the end of his life he simply could not. As a human being, it is extremely unpleasant to watch the representatives of the OCU unceremoniously, but out of habit, destroy everything that was dear to thousands of people whom Dumenko hypocritically called «their own.» What could be worse than when students mock the memory of their teacher. This situation says a lot about them as individuals.

Sympathizing with all those for whom Filaret’s death has become a truly irreparable loss, we urge the members of the UOC-KP to take the step that your mentor never dared to take — to return to the Church whose origins he stood at when he did not set foot on the wrong path. And you, dear friends, know perfectly well that this is not about the OCU.