Excluding from the statute of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate mentions of the Russian Orthodox Church will essentially save the UOC-MP from a ban on operations in case the Ukrainian parliament passes the relevant legislation, Kateryna Shchotkina wrote in an op-ed for Babel.
The decision to “amend the Statute” by removing any mention of the ROC seems to be a mere opportunistic ‘cleansing’ of the document for political purposes. Now, even if the Verkhovna Rada passes a law banning the activities of ‘religious organizations that have a governing center in the aggressor state,’ the UOC-MP shall not be formally subject to it. And we can assume it’s this, rather than a real break with Moscow, that was the goal the UOC-MP leadership and its ‘chief deacon’ pursued,” the expert emphasizes.
She recalled that the UOC-MP charter now refers to “broad autonomy,” while a real step forward would be to proclaim autocephaly, which didn’t happen.
At the same time, the Kyiv diocese abdicated responsibility for the collaborator priests, giving dioceses operating under martial law “the right to decide independently on certain aspects of eparchial life that fall within the competence of the Holy Synod or Primate.”
“You can ordain bishops at your own discretion, you can move between jurisdictions without notifying the Kyiv authorities. That’s not to mention ‘minor mischiefs’ like monasteries where the occupiers set up arms depots and strongholds, rifle-wielding priests preaching ‘the Russian world,’ consecrating Russian weapons, and any other form of collaboration – their Kyiv leadership will no longer bear responsibility for any of this,” Shchotkina wrote, pointing to this really important point.
