Head of Chernivtsi Diocese of OCU: There are no official communities in Romanian vicariate of OCU

The head of the Chernivtsi Diocese of the OCU, Feognost Bodoryak, admitted that the so-called Romanian Vicariate of the OCU is in fact a fictitious organization. According to him, since 2019, not a single Romanian-speaking parish of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Bukovyna has joined the Romanian Vicariate of the OCU, even though the institution is directly controlled by Epiphany Dumenko. Bodoriak said this in an interview with the publication “Shpalta”.

“A vicariate is a separate institution for a particular community. In our case, for the ethnic group of Romanians and Romanian-speaking Ukrainians in Ukraine. The vicariate is directly subordinate to the Primate of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, Metropolitan Epifaniy,” – Bodoryak said.

The head of the Chernivtsi Diocese of the OCU added that the Romanian vicariate is not actually functioning, since no Romanian-speaking parish of the UOC has joined it since 2019. In addition, Bodoriak expected that the structure would be headed by a priest who moved from the UOC to the OCU in early 2025 and is ethnically Romanian, but he went abroad.

“I don’t want to go ahead, but I had a conversation with him about this, he is not against heading this vicariate. I think that when he returns from abroad, I will present his candidacy to the head of the church. If there are other candidates, we will consider them as well,” – he added.

We recently reported that 20 clergymen of the Chernivtsi Diocese of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church announced their transfer to the Romanian Patriarchate. It is reported that the UOC clerics were forced to take this step due to the fact that in Bukovyna there is virtually no protection from the raider actions of the OCU, which, in the last few months, has been particularly active in seizing the churches of the canonical Church.