OCU head: We will never accept claims that we lack holy orders

Episcopal "ordination" of Dumenko. Photo: web.archive

In an interview with Radio Liberty, Serhiy Dumenko complained that the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) does not recognize him or his fellow OCU leaders as validly ordained clergy. He insisted that the OCU would never accept this position, comparing the UOC’s conditions for dialogue to Russia’s demands for the “denazification and demilitarization” of Ukraine.

Asked what he considered the best model for relations with the UOC, Dumenko drew a parallel with peace negotiations between Ukraine and Russia.

“We have heard the conditions being imposed: denazification and demilitarization – in other words, virtually capitulation. And we are being offered the same conditions, only in ecclesiastical language: to admit that we were wrong, that we are not an autocephalous Church, that we have no holy orders, and so on, and supposedly to repent. But we will never accept this, because we have fought and will continue to fight to the very end,” he said.

Dumenko did not specify how exactly he intends to fight for recognition of the validity of OCU clergy’s ordinations.

It is worth recalling that Filaret Denysenko, who “ordained” Serhiy Dumenko, previously stated that if he himself had been under anathema, then Epifaniy was not even a priest, let alone a bishop.

“If the Ecumenical Patriarch lifted my anathema in 2018 – and he did – then was I under anathema before 2018 or not?” Filaret argued. “If I was under anathema, that means all these bishops [of the OCU – Ed.] are invalid. And Epifaniy is not only not a metropolitan – he is not even a priest. If the Ecumenical Patriarch lifted my anathema in 2018, then the entire episcopate is invalid!”

At the same time, the Patriarchate of Constantinople had officially recognized the anathema imposed on Filaret by the Russian Orthodox Church in 1997. Patriarch Bartholomew confirmed this in an official letter to Patriarch Alexy of Moscow.

As the UOJ previously reported, a Phanar cleric who had previously belonged to the UOC-KP questioned why he had been reordained while OCU hierarchs were accepted in their existing ranks.

Read also