Religious scholar: Filaret was ready to sabotage "unification council" if UOC bishops in full force attended it

Doctor of Philosophy and religious scholar Viktor Bondarenko said that the head of the UOC-KP Filaret Denisenko was ready to refuse to participate in the so-called Unification Council, which took place in Kyiv in 2018, if the full complement of bishops of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church had arrived. Bondarenko noted that the head of the UOC-KP realized that if more than 100 bishops of the UOC participated, they would be able to turn the tide of voting on fundamental issues in their favor. In turn, the UOC-KP, even together with the UAOC, would not have been able to get even 70 votes, which would have jeopardized Denisenko’s plans. Bondarenko said this on the YouTube channel Viche.

«Look at what happened during the Unification Council on December 16, 2018. The council was attended by about 60 bishops (of the UOC-KP and the UAOC — ed.). But out of this entire array of bishops who were part of the Kyiv Patriarchate and the UAOC, only two bishops from the UOC joined: Metropolitans Oleksandr Drabynko and Simeon Shostatsky. In total, there are 114 bishops in this Church (the number of bishops of the UOC as of 2018 — ed.) Can two people be considered a sufficient representation of 114 people?» Bondarenko said.

The religious scholar emphasized that in such a situation, there was a risk that the council would not take place at all, since the head of the UOC-KP was ready to sabotage the event if all the bishops of the UOC took part in it.

«There was a situation, and this is being discussed openly today, that if more bishops from the UOC had come, Bishop Filaret (head of the UOC-KP) would have left the council with his bishops. That is, the council would not have taken place,» the expert noted.

Thus, since the council was held almost without representatives of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, according to Bondarenko, it cannot be called «unification».

«I believe that the Unification Council on December 16, 2018 was organized for various reasons. For the reasons of the approaching active phase of the political process in Ukraine — the 2019 elections were approaching. But due to the poor elaboration of this issue among the bishops of the UOC, it was conducted poorly. What task did the Ecumenical Patriarch set? He set the task of granting the Tomos of Independence of Orthodoxy in Ukraine to all Orthodox Christians, but in the end he granted the Tomos only to a part of them. That is why the council did not become a unifying one,» he concluded.

Earlier, Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople addressed the head of the OCU with an instruction to actively seek ways to bring the UOC hierarchs closer to each other through dialogue and the search for common ground to achieve unity. Seven years after the granting of the Tomos of autocephaly, the Patriarch emphasized the importance of efforts to achieve peace, condemned state interference in church affairs, and called for a rethinking of positions for the sake of general reconciliation.