Kiev, June 12, 2020
Photo: spzh.news
A new public movement has been launched in Kiev, aimed at finding ways to unify the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church under His Beatitude Metropolitan Onuphry of Kiev and All Ukraine and the schismatic “Orthodox Church of Ukraine” under “Metropolitan” Epiphany Dumenko, both of which it considers canonical.
“Orthodox Unity of Ukraine,” launched within the framework of the “Spiritual and Religious Perspective of Ukraine” public organization, looks to “work out forms of unification acceptable to both churches,” reports the Religious Information Service of Ukraine.
Yesterday, Epiphany Dumenko praised Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople for achieving unity in Ukrainian Orthodoxy and throughout the Orthodox world.
The Coordinating Council of the public organization includes politicians, religious figures, scholars, and journalists who will work to achieve the goals and objectives put forth in the “Memorandum on restoring the unity of the Orthodox in Ukraine,” drafted by the Organizing Committee.
The authors of the memorandum claim that both the clergy and laity of the UOC and the OCU are “dominated by the desire to unite,” which gives the new movement the right to work towards creating an environment where means of unification and real cooperation acceptable to both the UOC and the OCU can be found.
The organization states that Orthodox Ukrainians have “suffered from the lack of unity in their Church” for six centuries, and “the Orthodox Church in the Ukrainian lands, throughout its more than a thousand-year history, has served its people and has repeatedly become the object of attacks by our neighbors, especially Russia and Poland, which was a logical continuation of their attacks on the political freedom of Ukrainians.”
However, the emergence of a free Ukraine 30 years ago was accompanied by “bursts of search for the independence of Orthodox Ukrainians,” which culminated in the creation of the “Orthodox Church of Ukraine,” the memorandum reads.
Nevertheless, the organization also expresses its dissatisfaction with the “unification council” put on by the Patriarchate of Constantinople and former President Poroshenko in December 2018, which united the schismatic “Kiev Patriarchate” with the schismatic “Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church,” but which was not participated in by the Ukrainian Orthodox Church that canonically pastors the faithful of Ukraine.
Nevertheless, the authors claim that the “council” “restored Eucharistic communion with world Orthodoxy,” although the vast majority of the Local Churches do not have Eucharistic communion with the OCU.
According to the founders of “Orthodox Unity of Ukraine,” the result of this council was the appearance of two “canonical Orthodox Churches—the OCU and the UOC, which continue to exist separately for purely political reasons.”
The memorandum continues:
Strife and misunderstandings between the two Ukrainian churches do not contribute to the strengthening of Orthodoxy in our lands and the strengthening of Ukraine as a state. All this hinders the free identification of the natural desires of Orthodox Ukrainians for the spiritual and organizational unity of the UOC and the OCU and the formation of a single Orthodox Church of Ukraine.
Everyone must be aware, the authors write, that they are now facing the dilemma of whether to continue with two overlapping jurisdictions or to begin the hard work of creating a single Church.
“The first means to split the united people forever. The second is to unite it around Orthodox values, a united Church, and prospects for further strengthening the Ukrainian state,” the statement continues.
In this regard, “Orthodox Unity of Ukraine” calls on all conscious Ukrainian Orthodox Christians “to choose the ultimate goal of uniting the Orthodox in Ukraine and creating a single Orthodox Church based on the UOC and the OCU, for the glory of the Lord, His Church, and the Orthodox in Ukraine and around the world.”
