Kiev, January 24, 2018
The “Kiev Patriarchate” could become basis for new religion, as it serves national interests, said Advienko.
Photo: news.church.ua “We have a right to our own Christianity, unlike any Orthodoxy,” Andrei Advienko declared to thunderous applause during a press conference on Monday at the Ukrinform agency in Kiev.
The organizers of the event presented an initiative to ban the activity of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Ukraine, reports the site of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.
Seeing Orthodoxy in terms of national interests, there is a movement in Ukraine that sees the Church as a servant of the Russian state, which the Ukrainian government has officially declared as an “aggressor state.” The Ukrainian parliament is considering two bills which would severely limit the activities of the Church, under the pretext that its administration is centered in this aggressor state.
At the recent Council of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church, it was clarified that, while the Ukrainian Orthodox Church is an autonomous part of the Moscow Patriarchate, its administrative center is actually in Kiev.
During his speech, public figure Advienko, one of the organizers, shared his belief that Ukraine needs its own unique national religion. “We have a right to our own Christianity, unlike any Orthodoxy,” he declared.
In his opinion, a possible “basis for this national, colorful religious question” could be the “Kiev Patriarchate,” which “is focused on national interests.”
The “Kiev Patriarchate” is self-declared, and not recognized by any Orthodox Church. It is headed by the self-styled “Patriarch” Philaret Denisenko, the former Moscow Patriarchate Metropolitan of Kiev, who schismed from the Church of Christ after he was not chosen as the patriarch of Russia in the early 1990s.
In Advienko’s opinion, this new religion should bear no resemblance to Orthodoxy: “I don’t know of a single country that professes Orthodoxy and is successful,” he emphasized.
The public figure’s speech was met by raucous applause.
