Zaporozhye, Ukraine, August 13, 2026
Photo: pravlife.info
His Eminence Metropolitan Luka of Zaporozhye of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church is calling on his flock to respond with prayer rather than anger after Ukraine’s State Service for Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Conscience opened an investigation into the diocese’s ties to the Moscow Patriarchate—a pretext for eventually banning the diocese altogether.
In an appeal to the clergy and faithful of the Zaporozhye Diocese, Metropolitan Luke says he learned of the investigation from media reports, calling it “bitter news.” As it has done to other dioceses and monasteries, the State Service is examining whether the Zaporozhye Diocese’s administration answers to a “foreign religious organization.”
The hierarch calls on the faithful not respond to the accusations with anger or hostility.
“The whole history of the Church tells us of a different path,” he says. “We’ll go through this trial as we’ve gone through all previous ones—with the Gospel in hand and with that spiritual experience which for centuries has helped the Church remain faithful to Christ even when it seemed the whole world was rising up against it.”
“You can strip away a name with a stroke of a pen, seize walls and property by force, but no one can ever tear Christ out of the human heart,” the appeal reads, invoking St. John Chrysostom’s teaching that the Church can be persecuted but never conquered by human power.
He encourages his flock:
Let us ask God that neither fear, nor irritation, nor—most dangerous of all—hatred find a place in our hearts! We don’t know what other trials await us ahead. But we know firmly and believe with all our heart that the One Who is stronger than any earthly power is with us. Therefore, my dear ones, don’t be afraid and don’t lose heart! Strengthen yourselves with prayer, fasting, the Church’s Sacraments, and—what’s especially important now—mutual love for one another.
Metropolitan Luke calls on the faithful to intensify prayer and fasting, and asks them to gather daily at 9 PM for a shared prayer “for Viktor [Yelensky, head of the State Service] and all who hate, oppress, or wrong our Mother Church and all of us.” It asks the faithful to observe the coming Dormition Fast with particular spiritual focus and repentance.
Similar investigations by the state service have already affected several other dioceses and monasteries of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, including a probe that found the Koretsky Convent and the Pochaev Lavra affiliated with the Russian Orthodox Church, putting that convent’s operations at risk of a ban.
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Below is a full translation of the prayer referenced in the diocesan appeal:
Lord Jesus Christ our God, receive from us, Thy unworthy servants, this prayer, and having forgiven us all our sins, remember all our enemies, those who hate and wrong us: Viktor and all his co-workers and like-minded associates who rise up against the Mother Church and rage against us, and repay them not according to their deeds, but according to Thy great mercy, convert them: the unfaithful to right belief and piety, and the faithful to turn away from evil and do good, so that not one of them may perish for our unworthy sake. And us, and Thy Holy Church, mercifully deliver by Thy all-powerful strength from every evil circumstance, that we may all glorify Thee and Thy Father without beginning and Thy Holy Spirit, now and ever and unto the ages of ages. Amen.
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