UOC spokesman: Documents show who Churches consider Metropolitan of Kyiv

UOC Primate, His Beatitude Metropolitan Onuphry of Kyiv and All Ukraine. Photo: UOC

Current inter-church correspondence shows who the Local Orthodox Churches consider the “true” Metropolitan of Kyiv and all Ukraine. Archpriest Nikolai Danilevich, deputy head of the Department for External Church Relations of the UOC, wrote about this on his Facebook page on July 10, 2020.

“Often the opponents and enemies of our Church speculate in the media that Onuphry has supposedly lost his title, he’s not the Metropolitan of Kyiv and All Ukraine but only a metropolitan of “the ROC in Ukraine”, without a title, and write other similar nonsense,” the spokesman for the UOC noted. “In the meantime, church life goes on in its rhythm. The Primates of Local Churches write letters to His Beatitude, there is an ongoing working correspondence between the Churches, congratulations, thanksgiving notes for the congratulations, where they call our Primate – Metropolitan of Kyiv and All Ukraine.”

In support of his words, Fr. Nikolai published photos of fragments of only some of the official letters addressed to His Beatitude Metropolitan Onuphry of Kyiv and All Ukraine, received from the Primates of Local Orthodox Churches. "Since this is an inter-church correspondence, from letters I give only "headings", without the text," wrote the deputy head of the UOC DECR.

“These are all letters of 2019 and 2020, that is after the tomos, after the notorious scandalous ‘decisions’ of the Phanar when Onuphry allegedly lost everything,” added the spokesman of the UOC. “Such letters to our Beatitude mean that the Heads of these Local Churches do not recognize the other "metropolitans of Kyiv", and, accordingly, the decisions from Istanbul. I will no longer recall letters to our Beatitude from Athos, from the ROCA and other Churches or church structures from abroad (monasteries, dioceses, autonomous Churches) that do not have autocephalous status, but refer to Metropolitan Onuphry as ‘His Beatitude Metropolitan of Kyiv and all Ukraine’".

In conclusion, Archpriest Nikolai Danilevich invited the believers of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church to show these letters to those who “will still have something to say on this subject”. 

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