Patriarch Kirill of Moscow (Gundyaev) congratulated Metropolitan of Kyiv Onufriy (Berezovsky) on the day of his election as head of the ROC in Ukraine and thanked him for his loyalty and preservation of unity with the ROC.
“All these years, you have been destroying demons aimed at undermining church unity, courageously resisting various attempts to change the canonical system formed over centuries,” reads a greeting from Moscow Patriarch to Onufriy, published on the official website of the Moscow Patriarchate.
The Moscow patriarch wished Onufriy to remain firm and assured him that he shared with him the “joy of triumph.” The head of the Russian Orthodox Church has once again shown that he does not recognize Russian military invasion of Ukraine and that it is the ROC in Ukraine that is splitting Orthodoxy.
On December 9, 2020, Moscow Patriarch Kirill wrote to Onufriy: “The past has been difficult both for you and for the millions of Ukrainians who remain faithful to the Mother Church.” In June 2021, Kirill praised Onufriy for “maintaining fidelity to canonical Orthodoxy.”
It should be reminded that earlier, the Moscow Patriarch, Kirill, awarded Onufriy for protection of “verbal sheep from division.” Moscow Patriarch Kirill, like his subordinate, Metropolitan Onufriy (Berezovsky), has not condemned Russia’s illegal appropriation of Ukrainian sovereign territories of Crimea. The head of the ROC has not accused the top leadership of the Russian Federation and personally Vladimir Putin of the crime of murder, theft, and lies. Thousands of soldiers, according to the ROC, were killed by Ukrainians, not by Russia’s hybrid troops and their minion terrorists.
Earlier, Metropolitan of the OCU, Dymytriy (Rudiuk) stated he did not see any sense in the ROC existence because it is silent on the Russian-Ukrainian war, not even recognizing it. “If the ROC is silent about the war between Russia and Ukraine, why should it exist at all?” he wondered.
