A bishop who lies, steals – and boasts about it

Yaremenko with the stolen staff. Photo: OCU's Facebook

On May 29, the Feast of the Ascension, the OCU held a so-called "Divine Liturgy" in the seized St. Andrew’s Church in Cherkasy, led by local “Metropolitan” Ioan Yaremenko and attended by the city’s mayor and city council secretary. UOC believers had been forcibly removed from this church by police back on May 6. Since then, the doors had remained shut. The reason is simple – there never was a real “OCU parish” here. Yaremenko and local officials invented it, registered it, and reallocated the church building – which legally belonged to the Cherkasy Eparchy of the UOC – to their fabricated community.

According to the UOJ, one portion of those present on May 29 were parishioners from other local OCU churches, ordered by Yaremenko to show up. The rest were municipal employees herded there by state mandate. And it’s clearly visible in the photos: many women are in pants with uncovered heads, and some attendees aren’t even wearing baptismal crosses.

In his address, Yaremenko falsely claimed that the late UOC Metropolitan of Cherkasy, Sophrony – the man who built the church – had “dreamed” that it would one day belong to the OCU. He also announced that during the UOC Council’s anniversary in Feofania, where Metropolitan Onuphry publicly reaffirmed separation from Moscow, the bishops had allegedly “again pledged loyalty to the Moscow Patriarchate, personally to Patriarch Kirill (Gundiaev).”

Both of these claims are bold, blatant lies.

But even that’s not the most shocking part.

Yaremenko entered the seized church carrying the staff he stole from Metropolitan Theodosiy. That staff – along with bishop’s panagias, vestments, ripidions, primikēria, and the eparchy’s funds – were all looted during the October 2024 OCU raid on the UOC’s cathedral in Cherkasy.

And it’s not even that they stole and quietly sold it off, as might be expected. No – Yaremenko flaunts it. He parades around with what he stole, essentially saying to the robbed bishop: Yes, I took it. And what can you do about it? I’ve got the mayor, the government, and the police behind me. What do you have?

And it’s true – Metropolitan Theodosiy has none of that.

But he does have the truth, the Gospel, and Christ behind him. And when the time comes – when the last shall be first, and the first shall be last – then we’ll see the true worth of what is unfolding now.

Then again… that reckoning might come even sooner.

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