Kiev, December 5, 2019
Photo: Facebook
The three-member commission for the liquidation of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church has completed its work, commission member “Fr.” Vital Danchak reports on his Facebook page.
The final meeting was held on Tuesday, December 3 at the chancery of the “Orthodox Church of Ukraine” at St. Michael’s Golden-Domed Monastery in Kiev.
The commission consisted of the former “bishops” of the UAOC Vladimir Shlapak and Herman Semanchuk and “Fr.” Vitaly Danchak.
As OrthoChristian previously reported, on July 29, the Unified State Register recorded the termination of the religious organization, “The Patriarchate of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church” by way of reorganization by joining the religious organization “The Kiev Metropolia of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Orthodox Church of Ukraine).”
Both the UAOC and the “Kiev Patriarchate” informally voted to dissolve themselves on December 15, 2018, before uniting into the “Orthodox Church of Ukraine,” the brainchild of ex-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople.
A few months later, “Patriarch” Philaret Denisenko, the head of the KP, schismed from the OCU and revived the KP, which he argues was never legally liquidated, which the Ukrainian Ministry of Justice confirmed in May. The Ministry of Culture declared the KP liquidated in July, though a court blocked his decision in September, and the battle continues.
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The UAOC was the much smaller of the two schismatic groups operating in Ukraine for several decades, although it existed before the KP. In fact, it was “Patriarch” Volodomyr of the UAOC who left to found the KP with then-Metropolitan Philaret Denisenko, the former canonical Metropolitan of Kiev and All Ukraine, in 1993.
The Patriarchate of Constantinople’s “rehabilitation” of the “hierarchs” and “clergy” of the KP and UACO in October have proved highly problematic for other Local Churches, considering that Philaret was defrocked and anathematized, and the UAOC was wholly lacking in any sense of Apostolic Succession.
