Met. Hilarion: Ukrainian govt’s policy is aimed at discrimination of UOC

Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, head of the Moscow Patriarchate Department for External Church Relations

Pat. Bartholomew, therefore, told President Petro Poroshenko to bring to this gathering as many archbishops as possible, because he knows that with schismatics only and no canonical bishops "all this will look ludicrous and strange", head of the Moscow Patriarchate Department for External Church Relations said on the “Church and the World” program, as reported by the DECR communication service.

"Should this whole so-called unification gathering consist entirely of schismatics, it will, of course, not have even the tiniest bit of the legitimacy necessary for this gathering to be later recognized, and Patriarch Bartholomew is well aware of that," he said.

“All these actions are a consequence of the policy of the current Ukrainian authorities, aimed at discrimination of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church. The canonical Church does not want to participate in the unlawful act that Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople is trying to commit in Ukraine and which will be called the "Unification Council".

The bishop added: “Allegedly, this “Council” should unite all branches of Ukrainian Orthodoxy, but in reality, there are no branches, but there is the Ukrainian Church, which unites most Orthodox believers, and there are two groups of schismatics. For the time being, the Ukrainian authorities fail to unite even these two groups of dissenters.”

According to Met. Hilarion, the authorities, by all means, have to break the will of the Ukrainian hierarchs: all possible actions are taken in order to change the situation in favour of the Ukrainian authorities.

“Let us not forget that there are 90 archbishops in the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church, and these are archbishops who lead major eparchies with thousands-strong population and hundreds of temples, whereas all schismatics between them won't have even 40 pseudo-bishops, some of whom are effectively leading nominal eparchies,” Vladyka explained.

According to the hierarch, President Poroshenko is doing everything to stay in power, and for this, he “needs some great successes and great victories”: “One of these victories is to create the Ukrainian Autocephalous Church, but only the church people are against this project, so it cannot proceed."

As the UOJ reported, Vadim Novinsky, the head of the parliamentary faction of the Opposition Bloc, said earlier: instead of reconciling and stitching Ukraine, the Presidential team plays on the most painful and dangerous contradictions, risking fragile peace among Ukrainians.

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