UOC spokesman: Dissidents from Local Churches centre around OCU

Archpriest Nikolai Danilevich. Photo: Apostrophe

Dissidents from various Local Churches centres around the OCU. Archpriest Nikolai Danilevich, the Deputy Head of the Department for External Church Relations of the UOC, wrote it in his tg-channel in response to the information about the participation of Gocha Barnavi, Dean of the Theological Faculty of V. Sulkhan-Saba Orbeliani University of Humanities (Tbilisi, Georgia), in the OCU-organized event.

“My sources in the Georgian Church said that Gocha Barnavi was a teacher of dogmatics at the Theological Academy in Tbilisi, but he was fired two years ago,” the priest said. “The reason was his radical disagreement with the position of the Synod of the GOC, which does not recognize the Tomos for Ukrainian schismatics; inappropriate statements addressed to his colleagues on the same issue. In other words, he took a firm stance in favor of the Tomos."

According to the sources of the UOC spokesman, Tbilisi Sulkhan-Saba Orbeliani University, which employed the dissident teacher, was established by the Catholic Church in Georgia.

“Thus, the OCU gathers around itself dissidents from different Local Churches. This is small wonder, because 'like attracts like'. The OCU intrinsically consists of those who emerged and implement their activities by protesting against the Church and opposing to the Church. They are a kind of ‘Orthodox Protestants’ or ‘dissidents’,” stated Archpriest Nikolai Danilevich.

It’ll be reminded that the the Georgian Church made public the decisions adopted by its Holy Synod on February 11. The "Ukrainian issue" was not discussed at the meeting of the Synod of the GOC.

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