Head of UOC-KP: Constantinople violated my rights

"Patriarch" of the Kiev Patriarchate Filaret Denisenko. Photo: TSN

At the “Unification Council”, the Patriarchate of Constantinople violated the rights of the head of the UOC-KP Filaret Denisenko when it did not allow him to put forward his candidacy for the post of “head” of the OCU, about which the “patriarch of Kiev and All Rus-Ukraine” himself declared in an interview with the Internet publication Сomments.ua.

At the same time, Filaret stressed that he not only had the right to lead a new religious organization, but was also ready to do it.

“I was ready to become the head but Constantinople set a condition so that I would not stand for primacy in the elections. Consequently, my rights were violated. I had the right to nominate my candidacy but Constantinople set a condition that if I did not refuse, there would be no Council and there would be no Tomos,” Filaret stressed.

According to the "patriarch of Kiev and All Rus-Ukraine", he put up with this injustice "for the sake of Tomos, for the sake of autocephaly".

“But I know that our agreement was as follows: although I refused, I remain. It was said to me: ‘when you get the Tomos, then you are an Autocephalous Church, so you may do what you want’,” the "first hierarch" of the Kiev Patriarchate added.

He also noted that the same Tomos, which he had to sacrifice his own rights in order to secure it, did not bring anything on the Ukrainian land except for even greater separation.

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