Shostatsky: My conscience would not let me stay in the UOC

Simeon Shostatsky (right). Photo: risu.ua

"Metropolitan" of the OCU Simeon (Shostatsky) said that his conscience did not allow him to stay in the UOC. The former metropolitan of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church said this in an interview with the Uniate publication RISU.

"Metropolitan" of the OCU claims that his conscience did not allow him to "turn back": "How so? I wrote to the Patriarch, I constantly talked about autocephaly both in Moscow and in Kyiv ... Even on the last night, when we received these letters (inviting us to the "council" – editor’s note), we could still refuse. But the Exarchs, who gave us the letters, hoped that we would go. And how would that have been? You are going until the last moment, and then just like that, you decide you are no longer going.

"And that's not nice. My conscience wouldn't allow me to do that, to let down those whom I had promised to," Shostatsky said.

The ex-metropolitan of the UOC also claims that he had joined the OCU not through "certain benefits" but "through ideological convictions".

Earlier, the UOJ wrote that according to Simeon (Shostatsky), Phanar gave the OCU "in marriage".

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