Rivne, Ukraine, April 12, 2023
Photo: YouTube screenshot
The ban on the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Rivne simply means that the week of the Lord’s Passion is upon us. But the Orthodox will continue to have faith and to pray, including for those who spit upon them and the Church, says the UOC hierarch of Rivne.
On Monday, the Rivne City Council decided to terminate the Church’s right to use land plots where its churches and monasteries were built.
The ban simply means that “Holy Week has begun—the most important week of the whole year,” and that “we are ascending Golgotha together with Christ,” His Eminence Archbishop Pimen told an inquiring journalist.
“Today, they spat in the face of the mothers of our fallen soldiers. Today, the son of a soldier, whom we just buried the day before yesterday, was called an idiot, a monster,” the hierarch said.
But the UOC remains Christian:
What are we planning to do? Believe in God, pray, and first of all for all the deputies who spat in the face of the mothers whose sons died. We will pray for them, because Christ taught us to do so. He said what good is it if you love someone who loves you? You love those who don’t love you.
The Archbishop’s statement is similar to that of His Beatitude Metropolitan Onuphry of Kiev and All Ukraine who recently called on the faithful to take all legal measures to protect their churches, but without malice against those who attack the Church.
The Archbishop also commented that decisions like that of the Rivne Council have destroyed the rule of law in Ukraine.
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