Paris, September 11, 2019
Schismatic Evstraty Zorya and Metropolitan Emmanuel of Gaul. Photo: mgro.fr
A forum called, “The Role of Faith Leaders in Combatting Hate Crime”, which was organized by the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the Interfaith Alliance for Safer Communities of the United Arab Emirates, met in Paris recently.
The conference’s joint communiqué, published by the press service of the Metropolis of France of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, states that hate crimes are on the rise, and thus, “maintaining peace in our communities through the fight against hate crime is vital to fostering progress and prosperity in the world in which we live.”
The statement concludes: “Today we reaffirm our commitment to do what we can to influence our communities, whether religious or not, together to combat hate crime in the communities in which we live.”
Participants included several hierarchs of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, including Metropolitan Emmanuel of Gaul and Archbishop Job of Telmessos, both of whom were heavily involved in the creation of the divisive “Orthodox Church of Ukraine” (OCU).
Also participating was the OCU schismatic “Archbishop” Evstraty Zorya, which casts doubts upon the seriousness of the forum’s proceedings.
Zorya was the former speaker for false Patriarch Philaret, and a high ranking “bishop” in the so-called “Kiev Patriarchate,” which has now been dissolved by the OCU and the Ukrainian government under the influence of Constantinople.
While Zorya was a member of the Patriarchate, Philaret was infamous for many statements which could be very clearly perceived as hate speech, such as when he said, among other things that the people of Donbass, deserve to suffer:
“We should not think that the population of Donbass is innocent in these sufferings. It is guilty! And it must expiate its guilt by torment and blood…Did you vote for federalization in the referendum? Yes, you did. Did you sin? You did! So here is the consequence of your sin. If you had not sinned, if you had not voted, then you would have not suffered so much.”
Philaret believes the war in Donbass, which has killed over 10,000 people is allowed by God so that his “Patriarchate” can grow.
All the participants, including a number of Constantinople bishops plus Evstraty Zorya of the violent schismatic Ukrainian church. Photo: mgro.fr
Philaret also blessed a satanic mural disguised as an orthodox icon, which contained, among other things, Nazi symbolism, and a depiction of the Donetsk Airport being bombed.
Extremist views which go beyond simple “hate speech” were very common in the Kiev Patriarchate. For example, one of Philaret’s priests was known for posting speeches of Adolf Hitler on Facebook and “enlightening” his flock on how to “forgive” your enemies—by killing them.
The Kiev Patriarchate cleric, “Priest” Alexander Dedyukhin, was quoted as saying:
“Forgiveness comes in different forms. There is forgiveness through the scope of an automatic—that is how to forgive an aggressor, sending him 6 to 12 grams of love to one of his vital organs. This also frees us. The main thing is not to forget the simple truth: A dead enemy is no longer an enemy. A dead enemy is just a corpse. And we gain freedom by forgiving as much as we can;”
That may not even be the most sinister statement this “cleric” has made. He also advocated for terrorism and made a strange correlation between gifts of the Holy Spirit and Molotov cocktails. He also managed to be given an award, not by his patriarch Philaret, but by Patriarch Bartholomew himself.
To be fair, it is very likely Patriarch Bartholomew was not informed of the priest’s statements, as his ravings are largely untranslated from Russian—oddly, the Ukrainian nationalist cleric posts in Russian on his Facebook page.
Nevertheless, the Orthodox world at large was certainly warned by everyone from the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, to the Moscow Patriarchate itself, to this website, of the alarming extremist tendencies of these schismatics.
The same applies to individuals like Zorya. This information is known at every level of Ukrainian society, and even available in English, and therefore impossible that Zorya, formerly in charge of communications and press releases in the Kiev Patriarchate, is unaware of this.
Since leaving the Kiev Patriarchate and joining the schismatic OCU, created and recognized only by Constantinople, Zorya turned against his former master, who is now engaged in a legal suit with him. He declared Philaret to be mentally ill, drawing upon the anti-Russian sentiment that is the foundation for the OCU: “A healthy Ukrainian person does not give an interview to Russia-24 [a Russian news network].”
Neo-Nazi views are still very common in the OCU, naturally, as it’s made up of the exact same people. OrthoChristian published an article on how, in Zolochiv, Lviv region, Ukraine, an OCU “priest” declared that he considers members of the Nazi SS Galicia Division to be saints, during a funeral for the discovered remains of actual Nazis who fought for Hitler during WW2.
All of this is blatantly known to Zorya, and yet he is invited to a conference on combatting hate speech, instead of a member of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which is recognized by the entire Orthodox world and which is the victim of persecution and hate crimes at the hands of the members and supporters of Zorya’s group.
The Ukrainian Orthodox Church is actively suffering from not simply hate speech, but regular church seizures and attacks, where OCU supporters regularly attack clergy and old women. Zorya himself commented that he regrets what he views as a pause in church seizures.
While Zorya and his compatriots claim that such attacks are merely propaganda stories, the United Nations has independently verified that the autocephaly process in Ukraine increased tensions and violence against the canonical Church led by His Beatitude Metropolitan Onuphry of Kiev and All Ukraine.
It was not clarified why a member of the Church being persecuted was not invited, but a member of the church doing the persecution sat at the head of an anti-hate speech conference, chaired by the Ecumenical Patriarchate and a group from a Moslem gulf state.
Matfey Shaheen
