UOC spokesperson calls to end information war between Ukraine and Russia

Archpriest Nikolai Danilevich. Photo: Apostrophe

The Church should be out of politics, and for the UOC it is not Moscow and political issues that are important, which it is often blamed for, but purely church issues. The spokesperson for the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, Archpriest Nikolai Danilevich, said this in an interview with “Apostrophe”.

“Our Ukrainian Orthodox Church is very often accused of allegedly wanting to be with Moscow, supporting the interests of the Russian Federation, the “Russian world”, etc. But it’s not so, it’s not true, the clergyman noted. “As His Beatitude Metropolitan Onuphry said when he was asked a similar question, ‘we are not building any Russian world, we are building God's world’”.

According to him, it is extremely important to understand that the Church is separated from the state – "both Ukrainian and Russian, and from the American one, too, by the way".

“The Church should be out of politics,” emphasized Father Nikolai. “Therefore, it is not Moscow that matters to the UOC, not political issues but church issues, questions of preserving the canonical order in the Church. These things must be understood and separated.”

At the same time, he noted that “I would really like Ukraine not to be anti-Russian in the future, just as Russia not to be anti-Ukrainian,” since both peoples suffer from it, “but this is a mutual process, efforts are needed from both sides”.

“The Church and priests should call for peace and reconciliation, and not for war and confrontation. It is written in the Gospel. This is what we are trying to do. There is no tension between the church people of our countries, the conflict exists only between politicians, between states. In my opinion, reconciliation could be started from the “information peace”. We must stop to pump hysteria against each other in the media. We should move away from radical views and statements from both sides,” summed up the deputy head of the UOC DECR.

We recall that in the opinion of Archpriest Nikolai Danilevich, the Tomos not only divided but conserved the division of Ukrainian Orthodoxy into two unequal parts, becoming a certain spiritual Berlin Wall.

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