Sumy deputies urge to show "civil maturity" and withdraw from UOC

Sumy City Council

Deputies of the Sumy city council called priests and religious communities of the city of Sumy "to withdraw from the subordination to the Moscow Patriarchate and support the canonical autocephalous Orthodox Church of Ukraine". This is stated in the appeal of January 21, 2019, which the deputies addressed to the residents of Sumy in connection with the formation of the OCU.

“Our Ukrainian Church, founded by Holy Equal-to-the-Apostles Prince Vladimir in the city of Kiev in 988, has a history different from the Russian Orthodox Church,” says the document at the disposal of the UOJ.

Also, deputies report that the Russian Church originated in 1448 and call the bestowal of Tomos "an analogue of the declaration of independence of Ukraine in the spiritual sphere".

In addition to an excursion into the history of Orthodoxy, the deputies expressed the conviction that after receiving the Tomos, the newly-formed OCU equally interacts with other Orthodox Churches of the world, while the UOC "from the point of view of canon law is finally strengthened in the status of the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine".

“But we will not allow the enemies of Ukraine to incite inter-faith hatred and preserve peace and calm in our state,” the Sumy deputies said, accusing the ROC of imposing the “aggressive and heretical ideologeme of the ‘Russian world’.”

“We, deputies of the Sumy city council, are convinced that the Church is a community of believers, which is an integral part of the Ukrainian people. Therefore, we call upon priests, parishioners, religious communities of the city of Sumy to show their civic maturity, to withdraw from submission to the Moscow Patriarchate and support the canonical autocephalous Orthodox Church of Ukraine,” the deputies urged in their address.

As reported by the UOJ, “due to the large number of petitions to the Sumy Eparchial Administration of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine from residents of the region”, the “archbishop” of the UOC KP Methodius (Sribniak) addressed the heads of territorial communities of the Sumy region regarding the organization of “transfers” of religious communities to the OCU .

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