“At the council in Theophany we said that we are not part of the Russian Orthodox Church,” - the speaker of the Odessa diocese of the UOC

Archpriest Maximian Pogorelovsky, head of the missionary department of the Odesa Eparchy of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, expressed his opinion on the future of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. According to the priest, it is necessary to establish a dialogue between the UOC and the OCU, but there are people in both denominations who resist the development of the situation in this way. He said this in a commentary to Suspilne.Odesa.

“We officially said at the council in Feofaniya that we are not part of the Russian Orthodox Church. We have become a completely independent church. We took a step towards autocephaly. We did not notify other churches, asking them to recognize our autocephaly. But this will happen in the future. This path takes a lot of time. And we must understand that everything depends not only on the Primate of the UOC, His Beatitude Onufriy. We are not doing everything so quickly because there is a threat of a split within our church. Because there are people who may not yet agree with this, who may not yet understand. We have to explain it to them. And this is what we are spending time on now,” — explained the archpriest.

The priest noted the work of the Sophia Brotherhood, which, in his opinion, consists of “adequate priests” from the UOC and the OCU. A representative of the Odesa Eparchy of the UOC said that a dialogue is already taking place between the two groups within the brotherhood, which, however, does not suit the top leadership of the OCU and representatives of the UOC episcopate.

“We have the Sophia Brotherhood. These are representatives of the priesthood from our side and the side of the OCU, who are adequate priests who have been conducting this dialogue for a long time. But neither the representatives of the OCU, even their primate, nor some of our bishops like this dialogue. Not all of them,” — Pogorelovsky added.

Earlier it was reported that the public organization “Sophia Brotherhood”, consisting of representatives of the clergy of the UOC and the OCU, called on the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine not to rush to adopt Bill No. 8371, aimed at banning the activities of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. The organization believes that the bill should be finalized so that it “does not become an obstacle to the unification of Ukrainian Orthodoxy.”