WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 15th July, 2021) Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko's efforts to unite Orthodox Christian believers in the country in one church failed for canonical reasons, the Chairman of the Department of External Church Relations of the Russian Orthodox Church Metropolitan Hilarion (Alfeyev) said at a summit.
"There was an attempt by former President Petro Poroshenko to unite these groups. The attempt failed for purely canonical ecclesiastical reasons," the Metropolitan said at the International Religious Freedom summit in Washington on Wednesday..
In 2018, the independent Orthodox Church of Ukraine of the Kiev Patriarchate (UOC-KP) was formed via the merger of two other non-canonical branches of Orthodoxy in the country at the initiative of then-President Petro Poroshenko and the patriarchate of Constantinople.
The following year, Bartholomew I handed over the tomos of autocephaly, the decree of independence, to the UOC-KP. The Russian Orthodox Church (ROC), along with the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which is historically a part of the Moscow Patriarchate, refused to recognize this. The Moscow Patriarchate has described the situation as the "legalization of schism," stressing that it would have catastrophic consequences and affect millions of Christians in Ukraine and other countries.
Metropolitan Hilarion said the Russian Orthodox Church is not only the church of the Russian Federation, it has a canonical jurisdiction in other countries of the former Russian Empire, as well as in China and Japan.
The Ukrainian Orthodox Church, the largest one in Ukraine, has canonical and spiritual ties with the larger Russian Orthodox Church, and maintains autonomy and self-governance within it.
"In the Ukrainian case we have an example of the violation of human rights and right of certain Orthodox Christians," the Metropolitan said.
After the formation of the new jurisdiction, it seized hundreds of church buildings previously belonging to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, he said.
"About 500 churches were switched to another jurisdiction, and some of them were taken by violence. In some villages, we have priests and believers who do not have church buildings and pray in the field," he said.
