“Believers of the UOC repent for attending the Moscow Patriarchate,” - clergyman Kovalenko of the OCU

Former priest of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, who defected to the schism and joined the OCU, Georgy Kovalenko claims that believers of the UOC are visiting OCU churches en masse and repenting for “going to the Moscow Patriarchate.” At the same time, according to Kovalenko, it is possible to visit UOC churches if one “does not listen to the political information there.” Kovalenko’s words are reported by the website of the “Sofia Brotherhood.”

«As for believers, I see a huge number of UOC believers who calmly come to the churches of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine. On Easter in Sofia, when I was sprinkling baskets, I heard the Church Slavonic “Christ is risen – truly risen!” much more than the Ukrainian “Christ is risen,” which is more traditional for our parish. There were many people, and I saw and understood that these were people from the UOC. Moreover, these people come to confession and begin to repent for attending the Moscow Patriarchate. And we tell them: “You don’t need to repent for this, but if you have come to us, please, we are open!” This opens the way to a personal encounter with Christ and the way to encounter Christ in the temple in the Eucharist, when a person ceases to be afraid. Instead, they deliberately intimidate him, deliberately lock him in a ghetto of jurisdiction, and moreover, a jurisdiction that breaks with Universal Orthodoxy, a jurisdiction headed by a person who proclaims non-Christian messages, who is in fact a minister of war. Therefore, the first step is at least to go beyond the boundaries, go to the temple, pray together, and receive communion,» — Kovalenko said.

He also added that he sees no problem with people visiting the temples of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. The main thing, in his opinion, is that when they go there, they “do not listen to political information.”

«And you know, miracles happen to these people! Then they ask, ‘Can we go to the Moscow Patriarchate at all?’ And we answer, ‘You can, if you pray to God there and don’t listen to political information. And this is an important answer—mutual recognition, recognition that Christ is present in the sacrament, where Christians gather for this purpose. And this applies not only to Orthodoxy. A large number of refugees are going through this experience now, during the war. And it seems to me that this experience of openness to Christ is “autocephaly” of one’s own experience,» — added the former priest of the UOC.

Earlier, the head of the Odessa diocese of the OCU, Afanasy Yavorsky, stated that Russian saints such as Blessed Xenia of St. Petersburg and Matrona of Moscow could be venerated in the churches of the OCU. According to Yavorsky, there is nothing wrong with venerating these saints.