Current DESS head collaborated with KGB, UOC abbess says

Abbess Seraphima, mother superior of the Archangel Michael Monastery of the UOC, and DESS chief Viktor Yelensky. Photo: Facebook

Abbess Seraphima, mother superior of the UOC’s Archangel Michael Monastery in Odesa, published recollections of Church life in the 1980s and 1990s and alleged that DESS head Viktor Yelensky had ties to Soviet structures, the outlet Pershyi Kozatskyi reports.

According to the abbess, during the Soviet period Yelensky worked for the journal Man and the World, which was overseen by the USSR Cabinet of Ministers’ Council for Religious Affairs. She noted that this Council was subordinate to one of the directorates of the KGB of the USSR.

Abbess Seraphima stressed that employees of such structures, in her words, took part in repressive actions against the Church. In this connection, she said she sees continuity in Yelensky’s activity, given that he now chairs the State Service of Ukraine for Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Conscience (DESS).

She also recalled that during perestroika and glasnost, KGB archives were made public and, according to her, revealed Filaret Denysenko’s cooperation with that structure under the codename “Antonov.”

In conclusion, the abbess said that, in her view, although times and circumstances have changed, the tasks of such structures remain the same, and their representatives continue their work under new conditions.

Earlier, the UOJ reported that the abbess of the Odesa convent spoke about working together with a former metropolitan of the UOC.

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