How Letter for UOC ended up with "Communion with Orthodoxy through the ROC"

Archbishop Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad. Photo: website of the ROC Academic Committee

In 1990, the author of the "Gramota" on the independence of the UOC inserted the words about its "connection with the Universal Church through the ROC" at the personal directive of Archbishop Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad.

A video interview with the author of the UOC Gramota, Hegumen Innocent (Pavlov), has been published online, where he explains how the statement that the UOC is united with the Universal Church through the ROC ended up in the document. The video was posted by the Telegram channel "About the Church and the People".

According to Hegumen Innocent, who worked in the DECR MP in 1990, he received the task to write the text of the Letter for the UOC from the head of the Department of Archbishop Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad (Gundiayev).

"I remember, Kirill calls me and says – here, write a tomos on the independence and autonomy of the Ukrainian Church," said the hegumen, emphasizing that in response, he suggested that the hierarch grant autocephaly to the UOC immediately, "if there is such a historical demand."

"No-no, there should be no such words, only independence and autonomy in internal management. And with the Universal Orthodox Church, it is to have communion through the ROC," the abbot retold the instructions given to him by the head of the DECR MP at that time.

"Well, I thought, this never happens, this never happened in history. These are verbal games. You know, there was a game once, even before the Revolution, 'Do not say yes or no.' So here, 'do not say yes or no game,'" Hegumen Innocent shared his impressions of the task.

According to him, he was perplexed because there were "mutually exclusive concepts". After that, he opened the tomos of the Japanese "tiny 25-thousandth church" and almost literally copied it as the Gramota for the UOC.

Earlier, the UOJ analyzed the peculiarities of Patriarch Alexy's Letter in the article "Passions about Patriarch Alexy's Letter II".

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