Warsaw, July 30, 2025
Photo: OCU
“Hierarchs” of the schismatic “Orthodox Church of Ukraine” encroached on the territory of the Polish Orthodox Church again this week.
On Sunday, July 27, “Metropolitan” Hilarion (Protsyk), head of the OCU Chaplaincy Mission, “Archbishop” Mitrofan (Butinsky), and other OCU “clergy” served in Warsaw, reports the Union of Orthodox Journalists with reference to the OCU.
During the service, a “deacon” was ordained.
The schismatics served in Warsaw without the blessing of His Beatitude Metropolitan Sawa, primate of the Polish Orthodox Church, who, together with the whole of his Local Church, doesn’t recognize the OCU or the ordinations of its clerics.
OCU leadership has repeatedly complained about the fact that the Polish Church doesn’t recognize its organization, but also encroaches upon Polish Church territory without a blessing. In January 2022, Alexander Drabinko, a formerly canonical bishop who apostatized to the OCU, served in Poland. The Polish hierarchs protested this uncanonical move to the Patriarchate of Constantinople, which created and exercises oversight over the OCU.
Moreover, with such moves, OCU “hierarchs” also violate the tomos of autocephaly they received from Constantinople, which limits their territory to Ukraine, with no right to establish communities abroad.
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