Have the authorities started telling the truth about the church situation?
The head of DESS delivered a landmark speech on the Church situation in Ukraine, speaking openly about the UOC, the OCU, church seizures, and much more. We examine what it means.
On September 10, 2022, during the conference Resilience After Victory: Security Dimensions of Ukrainians’ Public Life, Olena Bohdan, head of Ukraine’s State Service for Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Conscience (DESS), voiced several points concerning the UOC that were highly unusual for Ukrainian public discourse. In short, Bohdan told the truth about the UOC and the Church situation in Ukraine – saying out loud things that are generally left unsaid.
It is worth noting that the conference was organized by the Uniate Ukrainian Catholic University and the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy – institutions that can hardly be described as friends of the UOC. The speakers also included people whose attitude toward the Church was, to put it mildly, far from sympathetic. It is not difficult to imagine that the organizers intended to discuss the “clash of civilizations” precisely in the context of a specific struggle against the UOC – something the moderator of the “discussion” made quite clear when he asked: “Where should we evict the Moscow priests to?” Yet almost from the very beginning, things did not go according to plan.
Former UOC priest Georgiy Kovalenko, one of the speakers, was discussing the document Ukraine After Victory: A Vision of Ukraine 2030 when he asked exactly how the authors of the project intended to minimize the UOC’s influence: “How do you imagine this? Is it supposed to evaporate like dew in the sun? What is supposed to happen to it?” Kovalenko also stressed that, from the standpoint of the Ukrainian Constitution, solving the “UOC problem” would be far from easy.
But the real surprise came with the speech by DESS head Olena Bohdan. At the outset, she stressed that representatives of the various ethnic groups living in Ukraine see the country as a space of freedom and self-realization. In doing so, she made it clear that freedom – including religious freedom – is an essential component of Ukrainian state policy, both now and in the future. Bohdan then turned to things that are “unpleasant to hear, but exist in reality” – in other words, the actual state of affairs in Ukraine’s religious sphere.
At the very beginning of her speech, Bohdan emphasized that her agency operates within the Ministry of Culture and is accountable to it. Therefore, the words of the DESS head cannot be dismissed as merely her personal opinion. So what exactly is going on?
The media are not telling the truth about the UOC
According to Olena Bohdan, what the media say about the UOC differs radically from what is happening in reality. Journalists remain silent about UOC faithful fighting on the front lines, about the Church’s charitable work, and about its churches being filled with worshippers. According to Bohdan, all of this remains “behind the scenes.”
We would add that the media not only fail to tell the truth about the UOC – they also spread a great deal of falsehood. Over the past several years, the media have done everything possible to blacken the image of our Church in the eyes of society. All these stories about “money going to Moscow,” “weapons in churches,” and “collaborators in cassocks” are readily taken on faith by many people. This “policy” is bearing bitter fruit, turning the country’s largest religious denomination into a marginalized group that some want to “ban and destroy.”
One can say with confidence that if the Church were no longer portrayed as an enemy, many people would quickly realize just how different the real picture is from the virtual one.
Olena Bohdan noted that the charter of the Kyiv Metropolia contains no references to the ROC, nor do the statutes of the eparchies. Following the UOC Council of May 27, such references are also absent from the principal Statute of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. The only question that remained for the state agency concerned Clause 3 of Patriarch Alexy’s charter, to which the Statute refers. That clause states that the UOC is connected with the other Local Orthodox Churches through the ROC. DESS sent a written inquiry to the Metropolia asking it to clarify whether this connection is administrative or merely spiritual. Perhaps once that question is answered, the state will have no further claims against the UOC?
UOC is Ukraine’s largest religious denomination
Olena Bohdan said several times that the Ukrainian Orthodox Church is the country’s largest religious denomination. She stressed that she has objective information about the number of churches in the UOC and OCU, as well as attendance at their services, and can therefore speak on the basis of actual data. Moreover, she gave specific figures. According to Bohdan, the UOC has almost twice as many priests as the OCU, far more churches – it would be logical to assume a roughly similar ratio – and around two million parishioners.
Olena Bohdan said several times that the Ukrainian Orthodox Church is the country’s largest religious denomination.
Filaret used to enjoy claiming that his Kyiv Patriarchate was larger than the UOC. OCU head Dumenko and his associates regularly make similar claims. Against the backdrop of UOC processions drawing hundreds of thousands of faithful, such statements naturally look comical. Nevertheless, the OCU continues to repeat them, citing various opinion polls. That is why the official statement by the head of DESS – obvious though it may seem – is extremely important and puts an end to this absurd debate.
Bohdan regretted that representatives of her agency were not yet able to monitor the situation in the regions, but said that what she sees in Kyiv speaks for itself: “In Kyiv, the UOC has an overwhelming number of Orthodox churches, and they are not empty. They were not empty in April, and they are not empty now. They are filled with believers.”
As for OCU churches, she said that people attend them as well, but “there is no situation where the churches are overflowing. No. There is room inside – more people can come in.”
Who can the UOC Lavras be handed over to if the OCU has neither monks nor parishioners?
Only recently, a bill was registered in the Verkhovna Rada proposing that the Pochaiv and Kyiv-Pechersk Lavras be transferred to the OCU. Former MP Oleksandr Bryhynets issued a similar call regarding the Sviatohirsk Lavra. In May, the OCU announced the creation of a religious organization called “Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra” and demanded that one of the Lavra’s churches be handed over to it. In other words, active provocative efforts are underway to prepare the ground for a raider seizure of UOC holy sites.
Olena Bohdan, in effect, gave all these people an answer. Put simply, there is no one to hand the Lavras over to. The OCU has no monks.
“Has anyone asked how many OCU monks there are in Kyiv? Fewer than 50. In the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra alone – which belongs to the UOC – there are more than 200 monks. With seminarians and academy faculty included, there are more than 600,” Bohdan said.
In other words, she suggested that if the Lavra were transferred to the OCU, even all of that structure’s monks in Kyiv combined would not be able to fill more than a small part of it. And the monastery faces utility bills running into the millions, along with restoration costs – “these are very large sums, and they are paid not by the state but by the UOC religious association.”
There is another important point. Directly across the road from the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra stands the Theodosius Monastery. Bohdan said: “If you go there for a service on Sunday, you will see how many people there are. And you can imagine how many monks there are, knowing that there are fewer than 50 of them in all of Kyiv.”
The DESS head’s implication could hardly be clearer: if the OCU has neither monks nor parishioners even directly beside the Lavra, what would change if the Kyiv-Pechersk Monastery were handed over to it? What would be the point? It seems Olena Bohdan explained in very accessible terms why handing the Lavras over to the OCU would be a very bad idea.
The DESS head’s implication could hardly be clearer – if the OCU has neither monks nor parishioners right beside the Lavra, what would change if the Kyiv-Pechersk Monastery were handed over to it?
Two million UOC faithful – a lot or a little?
Olena Bohdan put the number of UOC faithful at two million. Most likely, this was a conservative estimate, especially considering that the UOC’s Great Procession in 2021 alone drew 350,000 believers at one time. Yet even this “modest” figure of two million is impressive. As Olena Bohdan pointed out, these are “religiously active” people.
In other words, we are not simply talking about people sympathetic to the UOC, but about those we would call practicing or churchgoing believers. Put differently, if Ukraine currently has a population of 35–37 million, two million amounts to around 6% – a significant figure. By comparison, according to ROC representatives, the proportion of people there who attend church and observe the fasts is between 3% and 4%.
OCU takes UOC churches – and they stand empty
OCU supporters and “patriots” try to insist that there are no church seizures in Ukraine and that UOC believers simply invented the whole thing. And now, unexpectedly, this claim is being contradicted by DESS itself. It turns out that the seizures are indeed taking place – and their consequences are bleak. UOC believers are driven out of their churches, but no one comes to replace them.
Olena Bohdan said that many people tell her that mass “religious conflicts” have happened before in Ukrainian history and that there is therefore no need to dramatize the current situation. The DESS head disagrees. Why?
Because earlier conflicts arose when the UGCC, which had spent many years underground, was legalized after the collapse of the Soviet Union and began reclaiming churches that had been taken from it by the Soviet authorities. Dumenko’s structure, however, has no such history of underground existence – and has nowhere to draw new believers from. Bohdan backed this up by pointing out that more than 100 churches already taken over by the OCU stand empty:
“I don’t know how to get through to everyone – to both metropolias, to Ukrainian society – because this situation is becoming more dangerous with each passing day. We need the courage to acknowledge the facts, even when they are inconvenient, and then the wisdom to find a dignified way out of this situation.”
The call to acknowledge the facts is certainly timely. All that remains is to take the final step and begin taking concrete action to “find a way out of the situation.”
Attempts to ban UOC will destabilize Ukraine
Olena Bohdan said that conflicts surrounding the seizure of UOC churches damage Ukraine’s international image and create a “picture” that, in her words, fits perfectly into Russia’s narrative. This is dangerous, she said, “because it may lead people to think that Russia is right about something.”
Even more dangerous, however, is that religious conflicts are certain to destabilize Ukraine internally.
“Many people think that very few UOC believers remain, that all it takes is one final push and the UOC as a phenomenon will disappear from Ukrainian society,” Olena Bohdan said.
But given that the Ukrainian Orthodox Church has more than 10,000 religious organizations and two million faithful, attempts to ban the UOC are a direct path toward destabilizing the country:
“This is a very simple way to destabilize society, to create confrontation between citizens, a very serious conflict between citizens and law enforcement agencies, and resentment and distrust toward state authorities – because someone will have to come and remove people from the churches, while no new people will come in to replace those who were removed.”
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Olena Bohdan’s speech can be viewed as a certain evolution – or even a revolution – in the authorities’ position toward the UOC. It remains unclear how events will develop from here and whether the authorities will put an end to the lawlessness taking place in Ukraine’s religious sphere. What is clear, however, is that they are monitoring the situation and are perfectly well aware of what is happening. That fact alone should sober up many officials and “activists” who are fighting the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in violation of the Constitution.
Once again, Bohdan’s words should not be regarded merely as her personal position. Only recently, Culture Minister Oleksandr Tkachenko said that he knew of no “ROC in Ukraine” – only the UOC.
One can only hope that from now on this position will become the authorities’ official stance and will be put into practice – as required by the Constitution of Ukraine.
