Moscow, December 23, 2022
Photo: patriarchia.ru
Individual clerics shouldn’t take it upon themselves to make declarations about the current status of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, says His Holiness Patriarch Kirill.
In a report at the Moscow Diocesan meeting yesterday, the head of the Russian Church urged clerics to not go beyond the particular statements of the Russian Holy Synod on the matter. There have been occasional statements from prominent clerics, and even hierarchs, accusing the Ukrainian Church of schism.
Recall that at its Council in late May, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church resolved to reaffirm and strengthen its independence and removed all connection with the Russian Orthodox Church from its statutes. According to the new statutes, the Ukrainian Church is no longer obligated to abide by the decisions of Russian Church Councils, and the Metropolitan of Kiev is no longer a member of the Russian Holy Synod. His Beatitude Metropolitan Onuphry no longer commemorates Pat. Kirill as the primate above him.
At the same time, the Ukrainian Church has not claimed autocephalous status for itself, nor has the Russian Church granted such a status, which, according to the Russian Church statutes, can only be granted by a Local Council, consisting of hierarchs and clerical and lay representatives.
The Russian Synod has responded to the move by the UOC with both understanding and regret, but has never said that the UOC is in schism, while reminding of the procedure for granting autocephaly outlined in Russian Church statutes.
And speaking to the Moscow Diocese yesterday, the Patriarch urged:
I ask all of you, in your public statements and assessments of what is happening in Ukraine today, as well as in correspondence and conversations with the clergy of the UOC, not to go beyond the boundaries of what the Holy Synod has determined. So that someone’s careless and self-confident words do not further damage the unity of our Church, do not inflict new wounds on those who are already hard, do not aggravate the suffering of our brothers and sisters in Christ.
After the end of the year, “the fullness of the Church will judge how and what happened during the difficult times and how the archpastors should continue to act in order to rightly divide the word of Christ’s truth,” Pat. Kirill said.
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