ROC compares “online communion” of OCU with Kashpirovsky’s sessions
Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk. Photo: raskolam.net
On May 30, 2020, the Head of the Department for External Church Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate, Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, compared “online Eucharist” of the OCU with TV sessions of the “healer” Anatoly Kashpirovsky and called the rite as a “magical practice” that “cannot be taken seriously”. He said this on the air of the program "Church and World" on the TV channel "Russia 24", RIA Novosti reports.
Commenting on the Holy Communion sacrament conducted by the cleric of the OCU Igor Savva through video-conferencing, Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk noted that it is not worth talking seriously about the OCU as a Church – such entities, as he said, are called “schismatic gatherings” in the church environment, and “despite the fact that Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople tried to legitimize this structure, it failed to become a true church.”
“If the so-called priests of this 'church' perform such ceremonies, this only indicates internal developments in this pseudo-church structure,” said the hierarch.
The hierarch compared these actions with the television sessions of “healers” Anatoly Kashpirovsky and Allan Chumak, who were popular 30 years ago in the USSR, and reiterated that “all magical practices of this sort are rejected and condemned by the Church."
“I think it’s impossible to take this event seriously insomuch as it is impossible to take seriously the structure that now exists in Ukraine under the name of the ‘Orthodox Church of Ukraine’. Since the time of Kievan Rus, Ukraine has one canonical Church, which is called the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and is currently led by His Beatitude Metropolitan Onuphry,” concluded the representative of the Russian Orthodox Church.
As reported by the UOJ, earlier Igor Savva, rector of the Zaporizhia community of Fides, Spes, Caritas et Sapientia, a former UOC priest who was banned from ministry, said that under quarantine conditions due to the coronavirus, he performed the Holy Communion for his parishioners via video conferencing.
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