Metropolitan Luke: Single Local Church in Ukraine is a religious chimera

Metropolitan Luke (Kovalenko) of Zaporozhye and Melitopol

Metropolitan of Zaporozhye and Melitopolsky said this in his sermon on the feast day of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul at the Liturgy in the Peter and Paul Church of Bogatyrevka village, Volnyansk district.

"The memory of the holy apostles encourages us to reflect on the attitude to the events of today we’re in," the website of the Zaporozhye eparchy cites the bishop. "The current rulers want to create an organization which would be more accurately called a "Bankchurch" – an organization with a state form of property called the "Single Local Church", whose employees go in church clothes, cite the Holy Scripture to reinforce ideological and propaganda orders (so-called temniki) from the Administration of the President (located in Bankova Street), created to fight the Church headed by Christ."

According to Metropolitan Luke, an organization in which there will be no Christ can no longer be called a Church, but rather a religious chimera, ruled by people far from the Church, who do not even know the prayer "Our Father".

According to the bishop, believers cannot remain silent when this political, financial, Satanic project is attempted in Ukraine.

"These demonic ideas aren’t meant to come true if we follow the path of the apostles. For this, it is necessary to stand firm in the Orthodox faith, to boldly spread the word of Truth. ... We will not lose the properties of stone, the firmness of our Orthodox faith. And then no chimeras called "bankchurches", no projects involving the Church in political games will pass, because our hearts are directed to Christ, and in our hearts there is no loophole through which the enemy of the human race could seduce us from the path of salvation", concluded Metropolitan Luke of Zaporozhye and Melitopol.

Earlier, the faithful of the Zaporozhye eparchy sent an official appeal to Patriarch Bartholomew asking him to preserve the church peace in Ukraine and not be a "tool" in the political games of the Ukrainian authorities.

In mid-April, Poroshenko turned to Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople with a request to grant the Tomos on autocephaly to the Church in Ukraine and announced the creation of the Single Local Church. The Verkhovna Rada supported the President’s request.

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