SBU told Phanar many UOC bishops would join OCU in 2018, report says

Drabinko and Shostatsky at the "Unification Council." Photo: Drabinko's Facebook page

Ahead of the “Unification Council” in December 2018, Ukrainian security services assured the Constantinople delegation that many representatives of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church intended to take part. This is stated in a report to Patriarch Bartholomew published by the UOJ-USA.

The document was written by the current Metropolitan Gregorios of Ancyra. In 2018, he served as a patriarchal deacon and assisted the head of the delegation, Metropolitan Emmanuel of Gaul (now of Chalcedon).

Gregorios writes that on the evening of December 11, four days before the council, “representatives of the country’s security services” visited the Phanar delegation. They briefed them on security measures, the “genuine intention of many” among the supporters of His Beatitude Metropolitan Onuphry to attend the council, their “fears of Moscow,” and the “strong public support for this step.”

That same day, the delegation was visited by Metropolitan Alexander (Drabinko), one of the two UOC hierarchs who subsequently joined the OCU. According to the author, he “warmly expressed his support for the canonical actions of the Mother Church” and said that “many secretly wished to join the new body.” However, he said they were held back by two fears: that the Phanar would ultimately fail to protect them and that Moscow would be “merciless” toward the “defectors.”

Metropolitan Emmanuel assured Drabinko that Patriarch Bartholomew, “exercising his right to provide assistance through appeal beyond his own boundaries,” would under no circumstances leave clergy “of any rank” who made the transition without protection. The head of the delegation asked him, “in the strictest confidence,” to convey this message to all those who were wavering in order to encourage them.

That evening, the Phanar representatives had dinner with Drabinko and Shostatsky, who were accompanied by clergy “intending to follow them into the new Church.” According to the author, they discussed the position of UOC bishops and “the extent to which parishes and clergy were prepared to make the transition.”

Those expectations did not materialize. Of the 98 bishops of the canonical Church at the time, only Drabinko and Shostatsky attended the council on December 15. A month earlier, on November 13, 2018, the UOC Synod had declared the Phanar’s decisions regarding Ukraine canonically null and void.

The chronicle itself effectively acknowledges the outcome: at the council, Simeon sat on the presidium “as the first of Onuphry’s group” – in other words, the only representative of that “group” deemed worthy of such a place. In the final vote for primate, he received 28 votes to Epifaniy Dumenko’s 36.

As a reminder, on December 15, 2018, the OCU was created at the “Unification Council” from two schismatic structures – the UOC-KP and UAOC.  On January 5, 2019, Patriarch Bartholomew issued the Tomos of Autocephaly to the OCU. Nevertheless, eight years later, the UOC remains Ukraine’s largest religious denomination.

As previously reported, the UOJ-USA published a scandalous Phanar document on the chronicles of the OCU's creation.

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