KIEV (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 06th January, 2019) The head of the Ukrainian pro-European party Batkivshchyna, presidential hopeful Yulia Tymoshenko, said on Sunday that she always wanted Ukraine to have its own independent church.
"From the first day in politics, I wanted Ukraine to have its own, independent, righteous and just church," Tymoshenko wrote on her Facebook.
She also congratulated all Ukrainians over the fact that earlier in the day the recently established Orthodox Church of Ukraine received the tomos from Constantinople Patriarch Bartholomew.
Earlier on Sunday, the unified Orthodox Church of Ukraine, which does not include the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate (UOC-MP), received the tomos from Constantinople, which officially granted it autocephaly despite the fact that it had not been recognized by other Orthodox churches. Under the tomos, the new church's jurisdiction will be restricted to Ukraine and it will not be authorized to appoint bishops and establish its parishes abroad, making it effectively dependent on Constantinople.
The Russian Orthodox Church has repeatedly stressed that the "unification" process was a legalization of schism and has refused to recognize the election of Epiphany Dumenko as the head of the new church at the unification council. The UOC-MP criticized the decision to grant independence to the new church as well, stressing that the move was non-canonical and would bring division and trouble to Ukraine.
