Metropolitan Сlement: "Dialogue" with OCU is when a UOC priest is kicked

Metropolitan Clement of Nizhyn and Pryluky commented on the clause in the Resolution of the UOC Council on the terms of dialogue between the UOC and the OCU. According to him, the UOC has no illusions about the dialogue with Dumenko's structure. "It would be wrong to convene a Council only to stop some provocations by the OCU," the bishop said, answering the question of "Klymenko Time" whether the oppression of believers by the OCU had stopped after the Council.

"In my opinion, the OCU is more a political organisation than a religious one. In all discussions, which are sounded by the OCU, exclusively political rhetoric is used, there is almost no canonical argumentation, which would be perceived as important for believing people – mainly slogans and shouting," Metropolitan Clement noted. 

He recalled that one of the clauses of the Council's Resolutions describes the situation related to the presence of the OCU in the religious life of Ukraine.

"A serious stumbling block for the perception of the OCU as a religious structure is the fact that the ordinations of the bishops who are at the origins of the OCU, to put it mildly, raise questions," the hierarch added.

"Calls are heard from different sides about communication, about a dialogue between the UOC and the OCU, but on the feast of Ascension in Fastov, there was a vivid example of such a dialogue – a man, who called himself a "priest" of the OCU, kicked a priest of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in the stomach. Moreover, our priest did not take anything, on the contrary, they tried to steal the church from him. The leadership of the OCU – has it made any decisions regarding their, as they call him, 'priest', who has committed not only an ecclesiastical but also a secular crime?" the metropolitan asked and added that it is in this way, as it was in Fastov, that the "dialogue" between the UOC and the OCU most often takes place today.

As reported, the ninth point of the Resolution of the UOC Council named the preconditions for dialogue with the OCU.

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