On the forced mobilization of Metropolitan Serhiy of Tulchyn

Metropolitan Serhiy of Tulchyn. Photo: Metropolitan's Facebook page

The incident with the "busification" of Metropolitan Serhiy (Anitsoi) of Tulchyn takes the issue of the forced mobilization of UOC clergy to a new level.

1. TRC officers have previously abducted a bishop of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, but that was a vicar bishop – Bishop Seraphim of Novovorontsovka. Metropolitan Serhiy, however, is the ruling hierarch of the Tulchyn Eparchy. If he cannot be released, the Tulchyn see will effectively be left vacant – even though the hierarch is alive and has committed no canonical offense.

A situation in which a ruling hierarch is unable to perform his duties because he has been taken into the army is virtually unprecedented in world Orthodoxy. Nothing like this happened in Church history even during the Soviet persecutions.

2. The TRC’s actions toward Metropolitan Serhiy are absurd because he is… not a Ukrainian citizen. In December 2022, Zelensky issued a secret decree stripping 13 UOC hierarchs of Ukrainian citizenship, including then-Bishop Serhiy. Like the other hierarchs, he tried to challenge the decree in court, but without success.

Thus, TRC officers abducted a metropolitan whom the state itself had renounced. How can he be expected to defend a country whose citizen he is not?

The question would seem rhetorical.

But not in Ukraine.

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