UOC hierarch: Everything that bound us to MP changed, we started a new life

Metropolitan Nikodim of Zhytomyr and Novohrad-Volynskyi said in an interview published on Facebook why the UOC made changes to the Statute and how it affected its life.

"Since February 24, trials have also fallen on the church people – bishops, priests, monks – and we faced the question of changes to the Statute," the hierarch said. “We did not have a spiritual crisis, we pray as we did, but the position of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and its Primate was unambiguous - to condemn the actions of the Russian Federation and the bloody large-scale war".

According to the bishop, His Beatitude Metropolitan Onuphry appealed to the Russian leadership and its spiritual leaders but was not heard. 

"Legally, we have always been the UOC. We were self-governing, we were not financially or land-dependent on Moscow, we did not transfer any funds there, we opened our own eparchies, supplied our bishops, and clergy, and had our own church court <...> But this historic Council now gave us full independence. Everything that bound us to Moscow was completely changed, and now a different life of an independent UOC has begun," Metropolitan Nikodim explained and recalled that in the new Statute there are points on an independent chrism-making and opening parishes of the UOC in the diaspora, which emphasizes the autocephalous status of the Church, although the word "autocephaly" was not sounded in Theophany on May 27.

"The diaspora opens churches, communities gather, even in Ireland. The Serbian Orthodox Church, the Serbian Patriarch blessed the opening of our community on the canonical territory of the SOC. No other Church has this," the UOC hierarch stressed.

As reported, Metropolitan Nikodim said that all decisions taken by His Beatitude were and will be for the good of the Church.

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