The OCU has acknowledged a shortage of clergy for 2,000 parishes

The OCU is facing a serious shortage of clergy, leaving about 2,000 parishes without permanent priests. OCU cleric Andriy Dudchenko reported this during a broadcast on the “Pravoslavni Skhidnyaki” channel.

According to Dudchenko, despite official data on parishes transferring to the OCU’s jurisdiction, a significant portion of them have in fact been left without spiritual care. The cleric estimates that most of the approximately 1,000 communities that transferred did so without the involvement of clergy. This has created an imbalance: the number of parishes officially registered with the organization significantly exceeds the number of available clergy.

Commenting on the reasons for this situation, Andriy Dudchenko noted that the clergy training system “cannot keep up with the pace of growth in the number of congregations.” He also acknowledged that there is low interest among prospective students in enrolling in theological institutions. The OCU representative characterized this problem as institutional, emphasizing the difficulty of finding candidates with a calling to the priesthood.

As a reminder, we previously reported that representatives of the State Service for Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Conscience, together with the OCU, have complained about a personnel crisis within the Ukrainian schism. These institutions complain that, following the seizures of Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) churches in the regions, UOC priests are refusing to transfer to the OCU, taking their most active parishioners with them. Under these circumstances, a situation is arising in which a single OCU clergyman is forced to serve 4–5 parishes, while the OCU has extremely few new clergymen because “service” in the organization remains a low-paying occupation.