Publicist of OCU: If UOC clergy are FSB agents, why do we accept them?

Simeon (Shostatsky) and Oleksandr (Drabinko) are still considered ROC hierarchs. Photo: a screenshot of the ROC website

OCU publicist Tetiana Derkach wrote on her Facebook page about the contradictions in the logic of some of Epifaniy’s clergy, who label all UOC clerics as Moscow’s agents.

"The ecclesiological consciousness of some OCU members is simply astonishing. People are willing to balance on the brink of blasphemy for the sake of a catchy phrase.

So, if the UOC is an ‘FSB sect,’ then the leadership of the OCU and its activists who are transferring parishes are deliberately infiltrating the Church with FSB agents? And if it’s not a church, as some claim, then why are its priests being accepted into the OCU without the appropriate canonical procedures (chrismation, reordination)?” Derkach asks.

As an example, she cited a screenshot of a post by OCU cleric Yuriy Matveytsov, who wrote: “I’ve said it many times and I’ll say it again: it’s a huge mistake to treat the ‘ROC-UOC-FSB’ as a church. It’s not a church, it’s an FSB service of the Russian Federation.”

In Derkach’s opinion, “such talk actually harms the OCU itself.”

“To all the fans of the ‘FSB sect’ narrative, I suggest writing an appeal to the OCU leadership demanding that UOC representatives not be accepted without reordination, rebaptism, chrismation, and repentance,” she wrote.

Earlier, the UOJ wrote that the current OCU Metropolitan Oleksandr (Drabinko) claimed that the “Russian world” concept was originally his idea, and that he should be considered the creator of this ideology.

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