How the Phanar swallowed up the UOC-KP parish in Vienna

Ukrinform published material about how the structures of the Vatican and the Phanar in Vienna actually absorbed the cells of the Ukrainian diaspora.

As indicated in the article, back in the fall of 2013, clerics of the UOC-KP were sent to Vienna several times to conduct liturgies. In January 2014, a “priest” of the Volyn diocese of the Kyiv Patriarchate Mykola Lesyuk was appointed here.

Since the parish of the UOC-KP in Vienna was not legally registered in Austria, the Metropolitan of Austria and Exarch of Hungary, Arsenios (Kardamakis), Bishop of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, received it. For this, a cleric of Ukrainian origin Yuri Strugov, who studied in Thessaloniki, was invited to Vienna.

In January 2016, the Orthodox parish of Saints Volodymyr and Olga was founded as part of the Austrian Metropolis of the Patriarchate of Constantinople. In Vienna, de facto, two separate cells of Ukrainian Orthodox Christians began to exist – a legally unrecognized parish as part of the UOC-KP and a canonical parish as part of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. In January 2019, the final absorption of the UOC-KP parish in Vienna as part of the Metropolis of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Austria took place. The new united parish does not have its own church: the Greeks let it serve alternately in two of their churches.

“The tomos provided to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine is of great value. In particular, it gave a vector of direction to the unification of the nation, including abroad,” Father Yuri tells Ukrinform.

The material also notes that the Greek Catholic parish of Ukrainians also legally belongs not to the UGCC, but to the Ordinary of Eastern Catholic Churches of the Vienna Archdiocese and is subordinate to Cardinal Christoph Schönborn.