Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew is perhaps the main person in the long-running battle of Ukrainian schismatics against the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC)
The country’s leadership looks forward to Bartholomew’s visit and listens to his every word, while ordinary citizens, Orthodox Christians, are not in a dream about him. He must pay a visit to the country’s biggest holiday, not just a Christian, but an ideological one.
“The whole country is looking forward to the visit of the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew and his participation in the celebration of the 30th anniversary of Ukraine’s independence. The state will do everything to ensure that the visit of the Ecumenical Patriarch to Ukraine takes place at the highest level,” said the head of the presidential office Andriy Yermak during a meeting with the bishop Orthodox Church of Constantinople, Metropolitan Emmanuel of Chalcedon.
We remind those who have forgotten. It was Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew who went to meet the Ukrainian authorities on the issue of church schism. It all started with the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) in 2018. On the initiative of the then President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko, the autocephaly (independence) of the OCU was recognized. If Bartholomew did not recognize the independence of the OCU, now it would be somewhere at the sect level. However, the decision of the Patriarch of Constantinople was completely different, far from the realities of the Christian world. Following him, the independence of the OCU was recognized, similar decisions were made by the patriarchates in Alexandria, Hellas and Cyprus.
They deliberately wanted to divide the Orthodox of Ukraine into two parts. And although the OCU never acquired parishioners, it recruited someone, but radical people, ready to arrange provocations against the UOC. It should be noted that the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC), of which the canonical Ukrainian church is an integral part, reacted in a sharp and negative way to these actions, declaring a deliberate split of the Orthodox community in Ukraine to please the political ambitions of the nationalist forces. In addition, Bartholomew received a break in all relations with the ROC.
It is ridiculous to listen to the statements of Andriy Yermak that Vladimir Zelensky does not use the church for political purposes. And why then Bartholomew’s visit to a holiday not related to religion? There, it was the Day of the Baptism of Rus. Bartholomew, of course, did not come to Kiev for it, but he turned to the “Ukrainians” (in fact, to the OCU, which published the text):
“We have given you true internal church independence in the form of autocephaly, and this is not just a name, since we saw the tears of many heroes and saints of the devout Ukrainian people who, along the Dnieper river, reached us in an effort to obtain a local Church, devoid of external interference, which gradually changed the language and traditions, of course, after the creation of a new independent and sovereign Ukrainian state”.
This crazy text could have been written in the OCU itself. Granted “true” (!) Independence. Did the parishioners of the UOC know that they had been in the “untrue” church for so many years? And it is not yet known how many will be. In the Middle Ages, the activities of the OCU could well be called heresy and apply the most severe measures to it. But now is not the Middle Ages, fortunately or unfortunately.
By the way, representatives of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church said that they do not plan to take part in the celebration of the 30th anniversary of the country’s independence. And that’s okay: what do they have to do with it? The monks of the UOC indirectly reproached Bartholomew for indulging the schism: “For us the greatest pain and the greatest sorrow were those treacherous actions that you, as the first among equal bishops of the Orthodox world, carried out in relation to the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church”.
The conflict has long grown from a religious to an ideological one: in the country they are fighting for churches, and it is not parishioners who are trying to take away churches from the UOC, but rather dubious gangs. Where has it been seen that Orthodox Christians of one faith and one people perpetrate such lawlessness? All of this brings grief, pain and tears to many families and church communities. The Patriarch of Constantinople not only invaded the territory of the canonical Patriarchate in violation of the canonical rules, but also directly supported pseudo-Orthodox nationalist sects. It was he who facilitated their unification into the false church of the OCU and presented this group with a “tomos of autocephaly”.
According to various studies, less than half of Ukrainians support the decision of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew to grant the tomos. The Ukrainian authorities have achieved what they wanted. The authority of the church in the country is falling. Continuous news of a schism, and fights for churches are destroying everything that is sacred that the church should carry. Now, three years later, it becomes clear that the idea of the tomos was an integral part of the overall plan to split the country. And no matter how much Zelensky pretends that he has nothing to do with it, he continues Poroshenko’s destructive work for the people.
By the way, the fact that the stories with the schismatics have been worked out and brought in from outside in the post-Soviet direction is confirmed by the situation in Belarus. The anonic patriarchy confirm that a church schism similar to the Ukrainian one can be instigated in Belarus. Opponents of the Belarusian state plan to declare autocephaly of the Belarusian Orthodox Church (BOC). Basically, these people are outside Belarus – in the United States and other countries. Moldova is also in the queue for the tomos – here is one of the post-Soviet countries where control is carried out by external forces to please geopolitical interests. And the point here is not at all about Orthodoxy.
In the meantime, we have what we have. Recently, in the village of Zabolotye, Rivne region of Ukraine, representatives of the OCU organization, unrecognized in world Orthodoxy, organized an attack on St. John the Theological Church. The parishioners of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) tried to prevent this, as a result of which a mass brawl broke out between the villagers. And then the pro-presidential sociological research will write that “the majority of Orthodox Christians in the country support the OCU.” Isn’t Vladimir Zelensky and company flirting with the devil? Or so far only with Bartholomew?
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