Novynskyi: Authorities have a plan to subjugate UOC without His Beatitude

Protodeacon Vadym Novynskyi and Metropolitan Onuphry. Photo: Novynskyi's Facebook

`Protodeacon of the UOC and former MP Vadym Novynskyi commented on his website on Zelensky's decree to strip His Beatitude Onuphry of citizenship. Referring to his sources, Fr. Vadym spoke about Zelensky's plan to dismember and destroy the UOC.

The protodeacon called the SBU a "pocket structure serving Zelensky's clique" and revealed details of the authorities' plan: "Within the depths of the President's Office, a plan has matured: through depriving His Beatitude Onuphry of citizenship and his possible expulsion from the country, to decapitate the Kyiv Metropolis, appoint one of the senior metropolitans as locum tenens, and then, by convening the UOC Council of Bishops under the direct control of the SBU, elect as primate one of the hierarchs demonstrating increased loyalty to the authorities."

Novinsky related the President's decree to recent events in Chernivtsi, where believers defended the cathedral from a raider seizure by the OCU and the authorities. "It is no coincidence that the President's decree appeared shortly after the believers defended the cathedral in Chernivtsi," he noted.

The protodeacon called the authorities' actions "a manifestation of weakness rather than strength" and accused the regime of attempting to provoke religious confrontation in the country. He emphasized that the authorities have resorted to extreme measures: mass mobilization of UOC priests and direct persecution of the clergy.

Fr. Vadym called on bishops, priests, and laity to unite around the Primate and urged church hierarchs not to succumb to the authorities' provocations. "I urge those bishops whom the authorities are pushing towards infidelity and betrayal of the Church to wise up and not to act like Judas," he stated.

The UOC protodeacon named the ultimate goal of the authorities' actions as the realization of "the dream of the triumvirate of Zelensky, Yermak, and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew to take control of the UOC and join it to a pocket structure managed from the President's Office." Vadym Novynskyi expressed confidence that "victory will be with the Church, and all persecutors will receive their deserved retribution from God".

Earlier, the UOJ wrote that the state's struggle with the Church is reaching a new level.

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