“The OCU is being promoted as the only structure that should take care of the Ukrainian Orthodox,” Metropolitan Luke

The hierarch of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, Metropolitan Luke of Zaporizhzhia and Melitopol, gave an interview to an online publication in Georgia, in which he commented on church-state relations in Ukraine. The bishop drew attention to the fact that in Ukraine the OCU was elevated to the category of state religion, thus trying to replace the canonical Church. The interview with the bishop was published on the website “Point of View”.

“Without the legalization of the Ukrainian schismatics, the opponents of the canonical Church could do little. And now, at all levels, the OCU is being promoted as the only structure that should take care of the Ukrainian Orthodox. They just want to drive us there as a group. At the same time, they do not even leave us the opportunity to go underground. For example, in Lviv, local residents and radicals, with the support of the media and the Lviv City Council, are tracking down places where believers of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church could gather for prayer, given that they do not have a church building to hold full services. Moreover, activists are preventing local UOC communities expelled from their churches from renting premises and adapting them for temporary churches. And this is only a small fraction of the violations of the rights of believers of our Church. Violations for which the responsibility lies not so much with the OCU as with the Patriarchate of Constantinople,” — said Metropolitan Luke.

The bishop added that despite the seizure of UOC churches and re-registration of church communities in favor of the OCU, the organization led by Epiphany Dumenko simply cannot provide the seized property with new ministers and parishioners. At the same time, the UOC believers have not turned away from the Church and are ready to pray even in adapted premises.

“We mostly lose churches due to forceful seizures or falsification of the statutory documents of communities on the principle of raider attacks. However, our opponents are mostly celebrating a Pyrrhic victory. After all, having captured the walls, they cannot capture human souls. Expelled from their churches, our priests and believers continue to remain faithful to the canons. And the raiders’ “services” are simply empty! That is why many of the seized churches remain closed or are used as cinemas or concert halls. The “OCU,” according to their own reports, has neither “priests” nor “flocks” to fill the churches. It is the same with monks. A striking example is the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra. Out of several hundred monks, only one agreed to join the “OCU” and “take care” as a “bishop” of the monastery’s facilities taken from the UOC. So, his “services” in the Lavra often do not even gather 20 people! At the same time, the churches from the monastery complex that our Church has left are constantly filled with people. And this is a good illustration of your question about whether its parishioners have turned away from the UOC,” — the hierarch added.

Earlier, the director of the International Institute of Athos Heritage, religious scholar and lobbyist of the OCU, Sergei Shumilo, admitted that the process of recognizing the OCU by the Local Orthodox Churches has actually stopped. The reason for this is the failure to fulfill the main task that was initially assigned to the OCU, namely, the unification of Ukrainian Orthodoxy.