OCU “hierarch” explains tiny number of transfers from UOC

OCU “Metropolitan” Feodor Bubniuk. Photo: Bubniuk’s Facebook page

OCU “Metropolitan” Feodor Bubniuk of Poltava, in an interview with Kremenchuk Gazette, admitted the failure of the campaign to transfer communities of the canonical Church in the Poltava region and accused the remaining faithful of supporting the “Russian World.”

The representative of Dumenko’s structure said the low number of community transfers can be explained by the fact that a significant share of parishioners had already changed their place of worship on their own. According to him, in recent years the region has seen a mass outflow of people from UOC churches.

“There is an explanation for this: over these years, all conscious Ukrainians voted with their feet. That is, they dispersed among other parishes,” Feodor said, explaining the absence of legal transfers.

At the same time, the OCU representative claimed that only those who allegedly share the political ideas of a neighboring state remain in the UOC today. In his view, the spirituality of the UOC is entirely permeated with the ideology of the “Russian world” and “is not Christianity as such.”

“Only families or completely engaged believers remain there, people who firmly believe in this ‘Russian world.’ This ‘Russian world’ permeates all this so-called spirituality,” the “hierarch” said.

Feodor Bubniuk separately addressed the issue of monasteries in Poltava, Lubny, and Kozelshchyna, noting that gaining control over them is extremely difficult because of the position of the monks themselves.

“Monasteries are a very conservative institution, a closed institution. I think they will be the last to make transfers,” he concluded.

Earlier, an MP explained the slow pace of transfers to the OCU by saying that the structure lacks priests.

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