UOC has twice as many priests as OCU – Olena Bohdan

UOC procession with the Cross in Kyiv. Photo: korrespondent.net

On September 13, 2022, Olena Bohdan, head of Ukraine’s State Service for Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Conscience (DESS), said that the UOC has significantly more priests and communities than the OCU. She made the statement at the conference Religious Peace or a “Clash of Civilizations.”

“The Ukrainian Orthodox Church is the largest religious association in Ukraine. The UOC has had, and continues to have, roughly twice as many priests as the Orthodox Church of Ukraine,” Bohdan stressed, adding that the UOC also has two million faithful.

However, according to Bohdan, the media do not report “how many UOC faithful are serving in the Armed Forces of Ukraine, how many UOC faithful have been killed, or how much humanitarian aid the UOC provides.”

“All of this remains behind the scenes. The media don’t show it in the news,” Olena Bohdan stated.

Earlier, the UOJ reported that, according to the head of DESS, the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra would remain with the UOC.

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