UOC will not disappear even if it is banned by law - Govorun

Former Russian Orthodox Church cleric Kirill Hovorun, who was deprived of his dignity, has commented on the Ukrainian parliament’s legislative initiative to ban the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. He is convinced that the legislative ban of the UOC will not solve the issue with the church, as the priests and believers will not go anywhere. About this he told in an interview with the publication «Glavcom».

«Even if it is banned by secular law, it will not disappear — it will just move to another semi-legal or illegal status. There are real people, real communities of the UOC-MP, and they will not evaporate anywhere. It will be impossible to dissolve them all in the OCU. Although the calculation of the OCU is to dissolve the UOC-MP congregations in itself, like a bag of sugar, pardon my rudeness», — Hovorun said.

Govorun admitted his own prediction that after Patriarch Bartholomew granted Patriarch Bartholomew the Tomos on autocephaly, the majority of the UOC MPs were to be included in the new structure was wrong. Now the former ROC priest is calling for new models of coexistence between Orthodox denominations in Ukraine.

«There will be no dissolution of the UOC into the OCU,» the ex-archimandrite said. Nevertheless, according to Hovorun, it is necessary some kind of «institutional rapprochement, to find a formula for coexistence».

Recall, earlier we reported that on October 31, 2023, Archimandrite Kirill Govorun, a part-time cleric of the Moscow diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church, was deprived of his ministry. The former clergyman was accused of systematic violations of church canons and serving with representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church and the Patriarchate of Constantinople. Hovorun himself later said that this sanction would not affect him in any way.