“A clear difference between the OCU and the UOC”

Roman Hryhchuk. Photo: Hryshchuk's Facebook

One of the most media-active clerics of the OCU Roman Hryshchuk published a status on Facebook with the title ‘A clear difference between the OCU and the UOC’.

In it, Hryshchuk posted two videos. The first one shows children of the UOC cathedral in Vinnytisa singing a troparion to the cross.

In the second video, children of the OCU parish in Sniachiv village are singing a song about Ukraine.

In Hryshchuk's opinion, the little parishioners of the UOC, unlike the children of the OCU, are “Moscow nerds” and ‘zombie children who are forced to grovel before the Rashist language and Rashist men”.

He also called the Vinnytsia and Ternopil bishops of the UOC “scum”.

Firstly, in the video from Vinnytsia, it is clearly heard that the children are not singing in "Russian" but in Church Slavonic, which is used not only by the UOC and ROC but also in the Serbian, Macedonian, Polish, Bulgarian and Czechoslovak Churches.

Secondly, after the troparion, the children recite poetry in perfect Ukrainian. It remains unclear which of these two languages Hryshchuk refers to as "Russian".

And thirdly, calling children who, in his view, attend the "wrong" Church "nerds" and "zombie children" is absolutely disgraceful.

Such insults are clearly inciting hostility and hatred, which no normal priest should ever do.

And since Hryshchuk's superiors haven't rebuked him, we can assume they fully agree with him.

Moreover, since nothing like this has ever been seen among UOC priests, we are even grateful to Hryshchuk for his post.

He has indeed very clearly demonstrated the "difference between the OCU and the UOC".

Read also

Shaping “future of monasticism in Ukraine” while expelling monks. Seriously?

According to official data for 2021 (which has not been published since), the entire Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) has 233 monks. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) has about 4,700.