Slavyansk, Ukraine, February 18, 2019
Photo: news.church.ua His Eminence Metropolitan Mitrophan of Gorlovka and Slavyansk was detained at a checkpoint today and was escorted to the Slavyansk city police department, reports the site of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.
The incident comes just a day after the Gorlovka Diocese declared its loyalty to the canonical Church and its primate His Beatitude Metropolitan Onuphry of Kiev and All Ukraine.
Met. Mitrophan was returning from having just celebrated a service in one of his diocesan churches when he was stopped at the checkpoint in the village of Malinkovka and taken to the police department.
At first, neither a lawyer nor his clergy were allowed to see him, but after the incident became known to the faithful of the diocese, they gathered with the clergy of the diocese at the police department to serve a moleben.
A police representative soon spoke to those gathered, informing them that Met. Mitrophan had been detained on suspicion of separatism. However, he was soon released and left in the direction of the diocesan administration.
Another hierarch of the canonical Ukrainian Church, His Grace Bishop Gideon of Makarov, was deprived of his passport and stripped of his Ukrainian citizenship last week upon returning to Kiev from America, where he spoke to Congressmen and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo about the persecution the canonical faithful are facing in Ukraine today.
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