Kiev, August 14, 2024
Photo: podul.ro
Ukrainian authorities have refused to legally register the so-called “Romanian Orthodox Church of Ukraine.”
At its session on February 29, the Holy Synod of the Romanian Orthodox Church made the controversial decision to establish its own structure in Ukraine. The bishops have been concerned about the fate of the more than 100 ethnically Romanian parishes in western Ukraine for several years now, amidst the growing ecclesiastical schism that picked up steam in 2018-2019 with the creation of the schismatic “Orthodox Church of Ukraine”, and now the war in Ukraine with the accompanying state persecution of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church.
This decision was rejected by both the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which called on the Romanian Synod to reconsider, and the schismatic “Orthodox Church of Ukraine,” which also claims to have jurisdiction in Ukraine.
The State Service of Ukraine for Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Conscience has also refused to legally register the Romanian structure. Responding to a question from the Romanian outlet podul.ro, the Service said that acknowledging the “Romanian Orthodox Church of Ukraine” would violate Orthodox ecclesiology (though the state sponsored the creation of the parallel, schismatic OCU jurisdiction).
Instead, the authorities propose to create a special Romanian structure within the “Orthodox Church of Ukraine,” just as there is a Ukrainian structure within the Romanian Orthodox Church.
In July 2019, the Synod of Bishops of the schismatic OCU announced its intention to create a Romanian vicariate, hoping it would persuade the Romanian Church to recognize them, but the Romanian faithful living in Ukraine showed no interested.
Even the Ukrainian authorities acknowledge in their response to the Romanian outlet that the majority of the 130 Romanian parishes are part of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church under His Beatitude Metropolitan Onuphry of Kiev and All Ukraine.
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