Jerusalem, February 1, 2019
Phoro: Facebook “I am sincerely grateful to His Beatitude and the entire Orthodox Church of Jerusalem for the support of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church, especially in such difficult times for Ukrainian Orthodoxy,” Novinsky wrote on his Facebook page.
The Deputy visited Jerusalem as part of the Ukrainian delegation headed by the Chancellor of the UOC His Eminence Metropolitan Anthony of Boryspil and Brovary, who also met with the Patriarch on Wednesday.
His Beatitude met with delegations from the canonical Ukrainian Church twice in a week after canceling his meeting with Poroshenko, and he and the Patriarchate have thus far resisted the pressure to recognize and serve with the Ukrainian schismatics.
Thanks to the patronage of Novinsky, restoration work was carried out in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in 2016-2017 for the first time in 200 years. In particular, the Edicule over the Lord’s Tomb received much needed repairs.
Novinsky, a Deputy of the Opposition Bloc, is also as one of the few faithful defenders of the canonical Ukrainian Church in the Verkhovna Rada Parliament. He did not support President Petro Poroshenko’s appeal to Constantinople to create an autocephalous church in Ukraine and commented in April that it was merely a move for Poroshenko to shore up support for the upcoming elections in March.
He has stood against the anti-Church bills that the Rada has passed and has promised that the Opposition Bloc would appeal to the European Court of Human Rights if the Ukrainian courts legalize the seizure of monasteries and churches.
Novinsky was one of the two Deputies who managed to get His Eminence Metropolitan Agapit of Mogilev-Podolsky and Shargorod to safety in the Kiev Caves Lavra when he was taken to Kiev by the Ukrainian Security Service under false pretenses to try to force him to attend the “unification council.”
Addressing the Ukrainian crisis in the Archons’ Town Hall Meeting on Saturday, January 26, Dcn. Nicholas Denysenko specifically named Deputy Novinsky as an example of an opposition politician who argues against Constantinople’s autocephaly project and in support of the Ukrainian Church under His Beatitude Metropolitan Onuphry of Kiev and All Ukraine.
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