UOC-KP “cleric”: Epiphany bent parishes to political agitation

Head of the OCU Epiphany Dumenko and ex-President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko. Photo: news.liga.net

The "priest" of the UOC-KP temple in honor of the martyrs Vera, Nadezhda, Liubov and their mother Sophia from Klavdievo-Tarasovo Borodianka District of Kiev Region, Sergey Struk, said that before the presidential election in Ukraine, the head of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, Epiphany Dumenko, compelled the "clergy" to read out a message to the voters.

“The dean calls me and says that we need to read out an address of Metropolitan Epiphany to the voters, make a video record and send it to the diocese,” he said in an interview with 360 TV. “I wondered why this was being done by Epiphany before the election.”

Struk claims that the head of the UOC-KP Filaret Denisenko “didn’t allow himself that sort of thing. The only thing we would read in public was Christmas and Easter messages. His Holiness never said that we had to record these messages on video. We never gave an account because it was a matter of conscience of every priest. Our voluntary desire. Because we live in conformity with the Constitution of our state, we belong to our state.”

Struk explained his desire to stay in the UOC-KP with Filaret in a simple way: “This is an old man, and I can see that he has been wronged.”

Earlier, the UOJ wrote that representatives of the OCU had tried to seize the church of the UOC-KP in Klavdievo-Tarasovo.

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