Ukraine taking steps to ban Zaporozhye Diocese for refusing to leave the Ukrainian Orthodox Church

Kiev, October 16, 2026

Photo: hramzp.ua Photo: hramzp.ua     

Ukraine’s State Service for Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Conscience is taking aim at another diocese of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

The Service, tasked with investigating the UOC and its constituent dioceses and monasteries for affiliation with the Moscow Patriarchate in hopes of banning the largest Church in Ukraine, has declared the Zaporozhye Diocese to have such affiliation, after it refused to leave the UOC, reports the Union of Orthodox Journalists.

The ruling hierarch, His Eminence Metropolitan Luke, called his flock to prayer when the Service began its investigation in August.

The Service’s investigations are essentially a formality, as it already declared the Kiev Metropolia of the UOC itself to be associated with the Moscow Patriarchate, drawing on documents of the Russian Orthodox Church rather than those of the UOC itself. Thus, any diocese or monastery within the UOC is, in the eyes of the Ukraine, part of the Moscow Patriarchate by extension.

The Service’s announcement states that the administration of the Zaporozhye Diocese didn’t fulfillment the requirement to leave the UOC, and that Metropolitan Luke didn’t publicly renounce the ROC including his name in its governing bodies.

According to the Service, this is now the fourth religious organization to be recognized as affiliated with the Moscow Patriarchate.

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10/16/2026

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