DESS expert: UOC seeks to avoid UOC-KP’s 30-year status

Liudmyla Fylypovych. Photo: espreso.tv

DESS expert Liudmyla Fylypovych believes that the leadership of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church is trying to maintain canonicity and does not want to fall into the "gray zone" in which the Kyiv Patriarchate was for 30 years. She said this in an interview with the resource "Vysoky Zamok".

Commenting on the situation regarding the alleged finding by DESS of the Kyiv Metropolis’s affiliation with the ROC and the subsequent lawsuit filed by the agency, Filipovich stated that "a decision will be made, but it is too early to speak about its content".

She emphasized that the UOC "is supported by millions of believers and has more than nine thousand parishes", and that the court will be obliged to take this into account and "act in the interests of the faithful".

The DESS expert believes that the state has no desire to forcibly join the Ukrainian Orthodox Church to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU). According to her, the UOC is expected to condemn the aggressor and make some documentary decisions about leaving the ROC. However, Fylypovych is convinced that the Kyiv Metropolis will not agree to this, even after the court's decision.

The religious scholar blames the current situation on the UOC Chancellor Metropolitan Antony (Pakanych) and His Beatitude Metropolitan Onuphry.

"They are afraid that if they leave the structures of the ROC, they (in Moscow's view ) will voluntarily put themselves in a state of 'non-canonicity,' in a 'gray zone' in which the Kyiv Patriarchate was for 30 years. The hierarchs of the UOC-MP are afraid of losing even this somewhat unclear current state, proclaimed at their Council in Feofaniya on May 27, 2022, - a state they call 'autonomy, independence in governance,'" she said.

Earlier, the UOJ wrote that, according to Fylypovych, the law on UOC ban reminds her of the Soviet repressions of 1937.

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