Kolomyia, Ukraine, January 16, 2019
Photo: spzh.news Former Metropolitan Alexander Drabinko has “blessed” the community of the St. Nicholas-Dormition Cathedral in Kolomyia to defect to the so-called “Orthodox Church of Ukraine” created by the Patriarchate of Constantinople and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, despite the fact that he has no jurisdictional relation to the cathedral.
Drabinko is one of two former metropolitans who abandoned the Church of Christ to unite with schismatics.
The Kiev-based Union of Orthodox Journalists received a number of documents related to the transition of the cathedral of the Ivano-Frankivsk Diocese to the schismatic structure.
Four clerics filed an application for a change of jurisdiction on behalf of the entire community in the name of the former Metropolitan Alexander, who in his time as a canonical vicar of the Kiev Diocese of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church had only one parish under his watch and no authority to decide the fate of any communities, especially those in other dioceses.
Especially unusual in the petition is that the cathedral clergy asked for Drabinko’s blessing “to accept them in his jurisdiction in connection with the transition into the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.” That is, the clergy asked him to allow them to move from the UOC to the UOC.
The titles used in legal documents are important as the Ukrainian state keeps a registry of all religious communities, controlling their titles and interfering in the matter of the jurisdictional alliance of individual parishes.
Nevertheless, in the certifying hierarchical order, Drabinko “blesses” the community to switch from the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) to the so-called “Orthodox Church of Ukraine” (OCU).
Further, the name of the new structure is unclear, as the tomos of autocephaly rather calls it the “Holy Church of Ukraine.”
In his decree, Drabinko notes that he acts “according to the powers given by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew” and the primate of the nationalist structure “Metropolitan” Epiphany Dumenko.
The decree is written on stationery of the Foundation for the Memory of His Beatitude Metropolitan Vladimir of Kiev and All Ukraine, the reposed former primate of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which is, in fact, an affront to the memory of Met. Vladimir who opposed the interference of the Patriarchate of Constantinople in the affairs of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, as he wrote in a letter to Patriarch Bartholomew on October 13, 2008.
Moreover, Drabinko approved the transfer using his seal from when he was a canonical hierarch that reads: “Ukrainian Orthodox Church, Vicar of the Kiev Metropolia.”
OrthoChristian earlier reported that Simeon Shostatsky, the second apostate bishop, took his former cathedral into schism with him with the blessing of Pat. Bartholomew.
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