They believe if more people attended their cross procession than that of the canonical Church, Constantinople will be compelled to grant them autocephaly.
Kiev, July 30, 2018
Photo: news.church.ua Ukrainian police and Ukrainian schismatics are intentionally spreading false information about the celebrations that took place over the weekend, falsely inflating the number that took part in their cross procession on Saturday, and falsely deflating the huge number that participated in the procession of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church under His Beatitude Metropolitan Onuphry.
This is no surprise, given that radical nationalist-schismatics were spreading false information about the date and time of the canonical procession in an attempt to lure true believers to the schismatics’ event, and that authorities throughout Ukraine were using threats, sometimes even of death, to prevent people from attending the canonical procession on Friday, while paying people to attend the schismatics’ procession on Saturday.
The schismatics are hoping to create the impression that the majority of Ukrainians support them and their bid for a tomos of autocephaly from the Ecumenical Patriarchate. However, surveys consistently show that the majority of Ukrainians are either actively against or simply not interested in the autocephaly question.
About 250,000 faithful took part in the procession led by His Beatitude Metropolitan Onuphry of Kiev and All Ukraine on Friday, while only about 30,000, including President Petro Poroshenko, participated in the procession of the schismatic “Kiev Patriarchate” on Saturday. The head of the canonical procession had already reached the Kiev Caves Lavra while the tail-end was still at the beginning point on Vladimir Hill—a distance of over a mile.
Police numbers, however, place the number of participants in the canonical procession at a mere 20,000, reports strana.ua. However, the entire event was broadcast live, in which it is clearly evident that far more than 20,000 participated. Watch the video of the cross procession here.
“Twice that many came to us from various regions just on the buses that we know of. That doesn’t count those who came on their own, and the people of Kiev,” Archpriest Nikolai Danilevich, the Deputy Chairman of the Department for External Church Relations of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church explained, shocked by the police calculations.
Meanwhile, official police reports place the number of participants in the schismatic procession at 65,000.
A number of bloggers have closely analyzed the respective videos of the two processions and demonstrated clearly that the police numbers are wildly inaccurate.
“The national police underestimated the number by ten times yesterday, and overstated the number by three times today,” political scientist Kirill Molchanov stated on Saturday.
Meanwhile, the schismatic “Kiev Patriarchate” itself is reporting its number as 150,000.
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