Ministry of Culture official promises UOC will lose its status after Tomos

Director of the Department for Religious Affairs and Nationalities of the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine Andrei Yurash

While UOC believers are protesting against granting the Tomos, the director of the Department for Religious Affairs and Nationalities of the Ministry of Culture predicts future changes after the creation of the Single Local Church.

After the bestowal of the Tomos, the SLC will be called the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, the official said in an interview with "Glavkom". And there will be no names of the UOC KP and the UOC MP (as a number of politicians and media outlets call the Ukrainian Orthodox Church).

Moreover, according to Yurash, the status of the UOC will change: the Church will either become an exarchate or be reformatted into a separate metropolis, the “Russian Church in Ukraine”.

The official also expects that at least half of the eparchies of the UOC "in the near future will also be transferred to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (SLC – Ed.)".

Meanwhile, the Tomos granting is being postponed. Religious scholar Dmitry Gorevoy believes that the document can only be issued after a new church structure is created at the “unification Council” in Kiev and its head elected.

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