Young Republican Federation leader: Drafting UOC clergy is “death by cop”
Catherine Whiteford says UOC priests are sent to the front lines despite authorities knowing they are clergy, only for their deaths to be blamed on Russian forces.
Catherine Whiteford, co-chair of the U.S. Young Republican National Federation, told the American television network ONNJ that drafting Ukrainian Orthodox Church clergy into military service amounts to killing them by proxy.
According to Whiteford, UOC clergy, unlike those of other religious denominations, are denied draft deferments and sent into combat. “They're being forced in combatant roles on the front lines, which is essentially like death by cop. Those priests are pushed into vans knowing that they're priests, targeting them because they're priests, and then allowing for them to just say, oh, well the Russians killed them at the front,’” she said.
Whiteford stressed that Russian soldiers have no way of knowing that the person facing them is a priest, while a clergyman who has taken vows of nonviolence will not defend himself, making such individuals easy targets on the battlefield.
Whiteford also argued that the law targeting the UOC strips the Church of its legal status and criminalizes religious activity, even prayer. She cited cases in which believers whose churches had already been seized faced persecution for gathering to pray in private apartments.
She further claimed that the law threatens the property rights of more than 11,000 parishes. “In addition to this being a religious freedom issue, there is also a property rights issue. These people legally own their church property, and it is being taken away from them,” she said.
Whiteford also described the pressure she has faced in the United States over her position. According to her, Congressman Joe Wilson, who has received awards from the Ukrainian government, portrays UOC advocates as “Kremlin spies” and “sleeper cells.”
Wilson sent a letter to then-Attorney General Pam Bondi, also signed by Representatives Don Bacon and Austin Scott, effectively calling for all Orthodox churches in America to be investigated as potential “sleeper cells” for Russian propaganda.
After Greek, Antiochian, Serbian, and other Orthodox communities expressed outrage, Wilson clarified on X that he had meant only the Russian Orthodox Church. “That’s not what he said initially. So, I think he's kind of saying the quiet part out loud by not clarifying that,” Whiteford remarked.
She expressed hope that any peace agreement would include guarantees of religious freedom for Ukrainians and emphasized that the UOC supports its country.
“The Ukrainian Orthodox Church has raised millions of dollars to support the military. These are people that support Ukraine in this war,” she said, recalling that the UOC had "made a legal framework before 2022" having severed its ties with the Moscow Patriarchate. The Republican leader also added that the Church had condemned the war as the sin of Cain and publicly declared its independence.
Earlier, the UOJ reported that on the day of Donald Trump’s inauguration, Catherine Whiteford called for an end to the persecution of the UOC, warning those responsible for persecuting Ukrainian Orthodox believers that they would face retribution.
