The head of the OCU stated that he does not accept the revocation of his priestly ordination and will “fight to the end”

Epiphany Dumenko, head of the OCU, stated that his organization would not accept claims that its members “lack holy orders” and would defend this position “to the end.” In an interview, he compared the conditions for dialogue put forward by the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) to the demands made in the context of Russian-Ukrainian negotiations.

Dumenko complained that the UOC does not recognize that he and his colleagues possess canonical ordination. According to him, the OCU will never agree to acknowledge the existence of a problem related to ordinations.

He also noted that the conditions the UOC is setting for dialogue are, in essence, similar to the language used by Russia regarding the “denazification and demilitarization” of Ukraine. Dumenko emphasized that he considers these demands to be effectively equivalent to calls for surrender—but expressed in “ecclesiastical language.”

According to Dumenko, under this approach, OCU representatives are being required to acknowledge that they were allegedly “wrong,” that the OCU is not an autocephalous church, and that they “have no priestly ordination.” He stated that the OCU will not agree to such conditions and will “fight to the end,” though he did not specify exactly how this struggle would be waged.

As a reminder, earlier, Archbishop Silvestr (Stoychev), rector of the Kyiv Theological Seminary and Academy, commented on the validity of the priestly ordinations of OCU representatives. The hierarch asserts that the ordinations of a significant portion of the OCU’s clergy cannot be recognized due to canonical discrepancies and the canonical practice of the Church. Furthermore, the bishop is convinced that the existence of the Tomos of Autocephaly for the OCU cannot in any way serve as a basis for changing one’s stance on this issue.