Metropolitan Luke invites Yelensky to meet with Zaporizhzhia clergy
Metropolitan Luke invited the head of DESS to Zaporizhzhia for talks with diocesan clergy on church-state relations.
Metropolitan Luke of Zaporizhzhia and Melitopol has sent an official invitation to Viktor Yelensky, head of Ukraine’s State Service for Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Conscience (DESS), to visit the Ukrainian Orthodox Church’s Zaporizhzhia Eparchy, the eparchy's press service reports.
The Metropolitan invited Yelensky to visit Zaporizhzhia on November 13, 2026 – the feast day of Righteous Peter Kalnyshevsky. A eparchial-wide service attended by clergy and faithful is scheduled for that day, after which the official has been invited to take part in a substantive discussion.
“We propose holding a meeting with your participation and representatives of the eparchy to discuss pressing issues in church-state relations, the situation facing the Zaporizhzhia Eparchy, and possible ways to establish constructive dialogue,” the invitation reads.
Metropolitan Luke emphasized that such a visit would give Yelensky an opportunity to put his public statements about the need for dialogue with the UOC into practice and hear directly from Orthodox believers in the region.
“We believe such a meeting would be consistent with your publicly stated position on the need for dialogue and would provide an opportunity to hear firsthand the views of the clergy and faithful of the Zaporizhzhia Eparchy. We hope that your publicly expressed willingness to engage in dialogue will be put into practice,” the UOC hierarch concluded.
The invitation follows Yelensky’s remarks on the DNK podcast hosted by UOC Archpriest Roman Makar, where he expressed his willingness to engage in open dialogue with representatives of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and said he was awaiting invitations.
Earlier, the UOJ reported that during the same podcast, Yelensky had claimed that refusing to recognize the OCU amounted to indirectly denying Ukraine’s statehood.
