Can the “head of the Church” lie?

Sviatoslav Shevchuk. Photo: New Telegraph

And even more so – to lie in order to deliberately harm someone. But life shows that all this is a naive delusion.

Before the New Year, the head of the UGCC S. Shevchuk in an interview with “RBC-Ukraine” made several statements, which we will now briefly analyse.

1. UOC communities abroad are created by pro-Russian oligarchs with Russian money.

As we know, representatives of the Russian Church, which has its structures in Europe, are very dissatisfied with the creation of UOC communities, accusing them of “schismatic activity”. Therefore, it is highly improbable that the Russian Federation would spend money to organise in Europe about a hundred parishes of the UOC acting in parallel with ROC parishes.

2. UOC priests in their European parishes carry out propaganda of the “Russian world”, at the same time “creating a protest potential, which will then protest against the policy of their state”.

Firstly, almost all of those who left Ukraine are refugees who fled the war from this very “Russian world”. It is impossible to imagine that these people would listen to the propaganda of the Russian world.

Secondly, the charges of subversive activity against their own state are too heavy to be thrown around for nothing. We believe that Shevchuk should either provide evidence or apologise.

3. Shevchuk in fact called on the Ukrainian authorities to discriminate against UOC communities abroad: “This is a challenge for Ukrainian diplomacy, which sees the danger of manipulating the feelings or needs of our citizens who find themselves in the network of Russian influences in European countries.”

It is even difficult to comment here. Is it not enough for Mr Shevchuk to persecute UOC believers in Ukraine? Now it is necessary to close parishes outside of Ukraine as well?

4. The UOC is creating communities abroad parallel to the Uniates in order to poach Russian-speaking parishioners there.

This is, as they call it, “out of bounds”.

Firstly, Orthodox communities cannot a priori be ‘parallel’ to Catholic communities (Uniates are the same Catholics in Orthodox vestments). We understand that they feel masters of life abroad and consider all Ukrainians “theirs” by default. But the words Ukrainian and Uniate cannot be equated, no matter how much Shevchuk and his subordinates would like it. Orthodox believers want to be in their Orthodox Church and not to go to the Uniates, Muslims, Jews or Buddhists.

Secondly, the UGCC, despite all the aggressive expansion of recent years, is, in fact, still the confession of Galicia. Russian-speaking Greek Catholics are extremely rare. Therefore, Shevchuk is apparently talking about Russian-speaking Orthodox Christians who were lured into the Uniate parishes of Europe by deception.

5. The words that the UOC is “the Moscow Church in Ukraine”.

Naturally, such a structure simply does not exist. Shevchuk calls the UOC so with one purpose – to incite hatred of the authorities and society towards it in the conditions of war.

Thus, we can conclude:

- that the UOC communities abroad are created with Russian money is a lie,

- that UOC communities are a “network of Russian influence” is a lie,

- that they are propagandising the Russian world is a lie,

- that they are preparing protests against the Ukrainian government is a lie;

- that they are “parallel” communities to the Uniates is a lie,

- that the UOC is “the Moscow' Church in Ukraine” is a lie.

And all this is literally in a couple of minutes of the interview. Isn't that too much for the “head of the Church”?

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