On 2 January 2023, the church in Vinnytsia, Ukraine, shed blood. In the morning a man entered the church and knocked over the crucifix, destroyed respective icons, threw liturgical vessels on the floor, and yet slit the priest's throat with a razor.
A fewer days earlier in the Black Sea parish at the last minute, they disarmed a man who intended to stab a priest. In Checzelnik village, a masked man brutally beat a priest on the street, breaking his nose and shouting curses.
Stand-up comedians from Quartet 95, a movie studio co-founded by the current president Volodymyr Zelensky, they late published a video in which they indecently insulted Orthodox priests and publically wished them dead. The video is simply a parody of news in The regular Show kind that mocks the church and refers to its clergy as “Russian agents”. Many experts see a direct link between the appeals of actors and fresh violence.
The aim of all these attacks is the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which erstwhile remained in union with the Patriarchate of Moscow, but for more than 30 years has been independent and autonomous.
The spiritual situation in modern Ukraine is complicated. The country has been considered Orthodox since 988 erstwhile bishops of Constantinople baptized this land, which was then ruled by the princes of Rusi Kiev. The Russian Orthodox Church originates from Kiev. The first metropolitans of this church had their capitals there, and only centuries later they were transferred to Moscow. It was not until 1686 that the Greek patriarch entrusted the Kiev metropolis, which was then subject to the Church of Constantinopolitan, the Russian Church.
Under russian rule, the Orthodox Church in Kiev was almost destroyed, but was resurrected after the collapse of the russian regime. In 1990, Russian Church granted full administrative independency to its Ukrainian bishops under the name Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Although many mention to it as the Moscow Patriarchate, it is simply a completely independent governance structure. Ukrainian Orthodox Church elects its superiors and bishops alone, without looking to Moscow. There is no Moscow Patriarchate in the authoritative name.
The uprising of independent Ukraine in 1991 and the activation of Ukrainian nationalism plunged the Orthodox community into chaos. Filaret, the ruling bishop of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UCP), separated from the Church with the aid of the fresh Ukrainian authorities and founded a fresh church structure, which he called the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kiev Patriarchate (UCP PK). respective another priests founded a different structure, the Ukrainian Autokephal Orthodox Church (UAKP).
The remainder of the Orthodox planet never recognized these structures. The fact is that there are very strict canonical principles in the Orthodox Church. For ecclesiastical crimes Filaret was deprived of bishopial dignity and divine authority in the exercise of church sacraments in 1992. Although Filaret continued to execute ordination, baptisms and church wedding ceremonies, these sacraments were invalid.
However, bishops, like all people, live in the modern planet and are influenced by external influences. This happened to the head of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, Bartholomew. In 2018, the multimillionaire and then the president of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko went to Istanbul to the patriarchy of Bartholomew and asked for a legalization paper (tomos) for unrecognized Ukrainian churches, UCP KP and UAKP. At the same time, force was exerted on UCP to integrate into these separatist structures.
The reason for Poroshenko's activity was simple. He was preparing for the 2019 presidential election, and his program was based on 3 words: "armia, language, faith".
Thus, in late 2018, Bartłomiej cancelled the 1686 act handing over the Kiev Metropolitan of the Russian Church. He restored Filaret to the priesthood and reversively recognized all the rites performed by the cursed metropolitan. Both of them were united under the name “The Orthodox Orthodox Church of Ukraine” (PCU), and the disciple Filareta Epiphanius was elected head of the PCU (in the photograph with Poroshenko). Poroshenko presided over this unification council as did Emperor Constantine.
At that time, UCP was twice as large as PCU. Millions of Ukrainians are members of the UCP. However, this did not disturb Bartholomew or Poroshence. The second began to run in the media, where UCP was called the Moscow Orthodox Church and the Ukrainian PCU, although in both cases they are Ukrainians. The authorities organised ‘passing through’ church communities from UCP to PCU. All Catholics, Protestants, atheists were invited to these meetings, even though only members of the Orthodox parish can vote legally. In 2019, there was quite a few information in the media, full of photos and films, where you could see a crowbar or angular grinder of the door occupied by UCP temples.
If you think that the United States was on the sidelines as it developed, you're wrong. The State Department and politicians of both parties supported the fresh Church. 2 months before the creation of PCU in 2018 Filaret and Epiphany met in the United States with Joe Bidenwho expressed his gratitude for their work. Head of the Department of State for spiritual Freedom Samuel Brownback, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and peculiar typical for Ukraine Kurt Volker declared support for this project.
Immediately after the creation of the PCU received the first authoritative congratulations from the U.S. Department of State and Embassy. At the same time, Ambassador Brownback and US Ambassador to Greece, Geoffrey Pyatt – who was besides an ambassador to Ukraine from 2013 to 2016 – visited church leaders and Mount Atos to call them to recognise the PCU. Both Ambassador Volker and Secretary Pompeo repeatedly met with Epiphany. All indicates that the promotion of PCU was part of the US policy in Ukraine.
However, this policy almost failed erstwhile comedian Volodymyr Zelenski unexpectedly became president in the 2019 election. He immediately stated that he was not going to interfere in the affairs of the Churches. During the campaign, he ridiculed Poroshenko's ecclesiastical strengths during the pre-election debate and comically pretended to be wrongomos for PVC with thermos (both words sound akin in Ukrainian).
For a time, it seemed that the business of UCP churches had come to an end. The church conflict in Ukraine was frozen and a fragile balance was established. However, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, with the support of this invasion by the leadership of the Russian Church in Moscow, changed everything. The business of UCP churches was resumed, carried out by extremist forces without the engagement of central authorities. And that was just silence before the storm. This occurred in late 2022. The central authorities applied repression of UCPs; the Poroshenko methods seemed childish compared to this.
The cathedrals and monasteries were searched by Ukrainian SBU officers who reported that they had allegedly found evidence of the cooperation of bishops and UCP priests with the enemy. These discoveries were frequently funny. safety officers showed pictures of the Bible for children, prayerists, old liturgical books, archival collections of newspapers and magazines in Russian, and Christmas sermons or Easter patriarchy of the Russian Church. In cases where they found nothing, the peculiar services themselves planted compromising evidence.
For example, in the church in the village of Hłyńsk, close Plainy, safety services dropped off “enemy” flyers while pop was busy buying cars for the Ukrainian army for money collected by his faithful. "I received a call from the warden who said he was not allowed into the temple. The people of SBU searched the church themselves, then called the warden and led him to the closet, where they took out 2 packages of leaflets which they had placed themselves there due to the fact that there could not be leaflets of this content in our church" - the Rector told us Fr Vasil Naczev.
The real details of these searches are practically unknown to Ukrainians. Instead, it is widely reported in all media that peculiar services find much evidence of cooperation with the enemy in UCP churches. Thus, UCP is presented as an enemy, as the consequences are described above.
Fox News writer Tucker Carlson “ Zelenski’s secret police raided monasteries all over Ukraine and even a monastery full of nuns, ” he said, “and arrested dozens of clergymen for no reasonable reason and with a clear violation of the Ukrainian Constitution, which is no longer relevant. And in the face of that, the Biden administration is silent. Not a word. Instead, they proceed to press to send Zelenski more dollars from our taxes.”
Carlson's absolutely right. president Zelenski, breaking Ukrainian law, imposed sanctions on Ukrainian bishops, and then took Ukrainian citizenship from any another bishops, although this is clearly contrary to the Constitution.
The situation is all the more absurd that UCP does everything to aid its citizens in this unfair war. According to authoritative data, the Church gives large aid to the military, to internally displaced and in need. Aid to the army reached nearly $1 million and 180 tons of humanitarian aid was provided to the Armed Forces of Ukraine – impressive, given that the people in Ukraine are not rich at all, and their donations to temples are very rare. Furthermore, on the main council of the UCP in May 2022 he adopted a number of decisions to break canonical spiritual ties with the Russian Orthodox Church.
However, it seems that Zelenski intends to completely delegal and destruct Ukrainian Orthodox Church. On 20 January, a bill on the actual ban on UCP action was sent to Parliament. The bill was initiated not by average parliamentarians, but by Prime Minister Denys Szmyhal. This means returning to a disgraceful era in which a state in the centre of Europe intends to deal with the religion of its own people.
Jewhen Herman
Jewhen Herman is simply a nickname for a Kiev journalist.
photo public domain
For: ‘The American Conservative’
