Metropolitan Hilarion (Alfeyev) accuses Kiev Patriarchate of raiding the UOC temples

"Neither the leader of this schismatic group, nor its official representative is looking for a dialogue," believes Metropolitan Hilarion. "They are looking for a dialogue with the Ukrainian authorities, they are taking advantage of the political situation in order to bite off the canonical Church as much as possible: they take over its temples, through raiding, through violence."

Metropolitan Hilarion described the Kyiv Patriarchate as a "self-organized mob" and recalled that this structure, not recognized in the Orthodox world, was created by excommunicated Filaret Denisenko.

"We call it a split,” stressed the hierarch of the ROC. "And the ways to heal the split, as far as we can see it, is that those who backslid should return to the Church."

He also expressed an opinion that the division that exists today in Ukrainian society "owes much to the division that once emerged in Orthodoxy."

Read also