Kiev, June 24, 2021
Newly-departed Met. Mitrophan. Photo: aleksandrovsk-prav.ru
His Eminence Metropolitan Mitrophan of Lugansk of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church reposed in the Lord last Friday, June 18. The Lugansk Diocese reported the cause of death as a heart attack.
However, rumors soon began swirling online. As a hierarch of the canonical Church serving in a territory not controlled by Kiev, he was accused of collaborating with militants, and it is said that the Ukrainian Special Services were interested in his activity, reports the Ukrainian outlet Glavkom.
Then images of a document purporting to be a forensic medical exam from Lugansk appeared online, identifying the cause of death as blunt force head trauma, fueling theories that His Eminence had been murdered, perhaps by a local security officer who accidentally hit the hierarch too hard and knocked him down a flight of stairs.
For example, “Archbishop” Evstraty Zorya, the Speaker for the schismatic “Orthodox Church of Ukraine,” a large portion of whose Facebook page is dedicated to offering his analyses of news concerning the canonical Church (for example, he recently insinuated that Laity [Miryane], the new lay organization in Ukraine, must be a Kremlin project because the stylized letter in its logo looks somewhat similar to decoration on the Moscow Kremlin), claimed that UOC authorities were covering up the truth. This was after he attempted to paint Met. Mitrophan as a “pro-autocephalist.”
However, according to Glavkom’s sources both within and without the UOC, the Metropolitan’s fall had nothing to do with a violent attack against him.
Speaking with the outlet, His Eminence Metropolitan Kliment of Nezhin and Priluky, head of the Synodal Department for Information and Education, commented that he saw nothing that in any way indicates a violent death. The Diocese of Lugansk reports that he suffered a heart attack and fell and died, Met. Kliment notes.
Met. Mitrophan had been complaining about angina and high blood pressure for a long time and was planning to get medical treatment in the near future, Met. Kliment reveals.
Asked whether the medical exam, which refers to brain swelling from a blow to the head, can be trusted, Met. Kliment notes that bishops close to Met. Mitrophan have testified that he fell from a heart attack, which would cause head trauma, and that, in any case, “For me, as a citizen of Ukraine, the documents issued in that territory are not documents at all. I think that for both you and me, they have no legal force.”
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