The meeting in the Pochaiv Lavra, which is now part of the Moscow Patriarchate, resulted in an appeal by monks of the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine to Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I. The appeal is written in Russian and signed off by the abbot of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra, Pavel (Lebid).
The appeal was also signed by Metropolitan Arseniy (Yakovenko), the chief of the Svyatogorsk monastery. Back in 2018, Arseniy stated it was Ukraine that had started the war, not Russia, and described the war as “civil conflict.” In addition, as per Ukraine Army General Gordiychuk and some other accounts, terrorists with the “LPR/DPR” and Russian mercenaries had been hiding in that Lavra.
It is worth noting that the monks of the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine address to “His Holiness Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople.” On the same day, on the Ukrainian version of the ROCinU website, an appeal “to Orthodox Christians” was published, which is similar in content, but not addressed to Patriarch Bartholomew.
The monks of the Moscow Patriarchate pretend they are unaware of a decades-long split among Orthodox Christians in Ukraine and that they don’t understand why this wound had to be healed. “We are lost in speculation as to what motivated your decisions but we see with our own eyes what they have led to,” they wrote, addressing Bartholomew.
But what have these decisions really led to? To the unification of the three Orthodox Churches, to the healing of the split in Orthodoxy, to the emergence of the Church independent of Moscow, with which Ukraine is waging a nearly 10-year war? Aren’t these good fruits? Aren’t they visible enough for the actions of Patriarch Bartholomew to be “lost in speculation as to what motivated” them? But the clergy of the ROCinU, led by Pavel, deliberately ignores the fact that it was they who chose not to attend at the Unification Council, and blames the Ecumenical Patriarch for all the troubles they caused.
Would there be any of those “seizures of temples,” of which the Moscow Patriarchate is so fond of trumpeting if the whole Moscow Patriarchate followed the tomos and the example of Metropolitans Oleksandr and Simeon? Who would the ROCinU sue if there were one Local Orthodox Church? These questions are rhetorical, but not to the representatives of the Moscow Patriarchate in Ukraine, apparently.
At the same time, the incidents of persecution they write about in their address to Bartholomew are nowhere to be seen in Ukraine. There are religious organizations that decide by a majority vote to convert to the Local Orthodox Church. For example, in Sumy region, 107 people spoke at the meeting to switch to the OCU, against three votes who were for the MP, said OCU Priest Ihor Solovey, who had also earlier quit the Moscow Patriarchate.
So why is the free will to choose which Church to visit called by the Moscow Patriarchate as “seizure” and “persecution”? Perhaps they don’t want to break away from Moscow and part of the “one people” and the “Russian world”, which Vladimir Putin “protects” with tanks and rocket artillery.
As confirmation that the ROCinU does not seek to achieve unity and consolidation of Ukrainian society, the monks of the ROC in Ukraine write to Patriarch Bartholomew the following: “We appeal to you to assess the implications of your actions and reconsider your decision.” They write as if unity and independence from Moscow is something criminal and irreparable that needs to be “reconsidered” and fixed.
As soon as Patriarch Bartholomew sides with the ROC and the schism, he will again be “the first bishop and father in honor” for the Moscow Patriarchate, the letter reads. They also choose not to mention the fact that it was the ROC and its branches in Ukraine that broke the unity of Orthodoxy after the OCU received the tomos of autocephaly. However, this doesn’t prevent the monks of the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine from writing with a clear conscience that Bartholomew’s actions “caused a split.” It’s as if a thief is shouting, “Catch the thief!” In this case, the ROCinU, which caused the split, is shouting about Patriarch Bartholomew, whose actions, in their opinion, caused the “split.”
At the end of the address, the monks called their church legitimate, although everyone already knows that after the granting of the tomos and the annulment of the decision of 1686, the Moscow Church in Ukraine was outlawed and its clergy – deprived of titles. The ROC in Ukraine also has no right to keep its timeline from the time of Volodymyr’s baptism, as they are a brainchild of the occupation by the Russian Church after 1686.
The visit of Patriarch Bartholomew is approaching, which is of great concern to the ROC in Ukraine. Serious provocations can be expected from them, but for now they have limited themselves to letters and political moves involving posters against Patriarch Bartholomew at Kyiv rallies.
