The Lviv Regional Council has adopted a statement calling on the government to ban the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate in Ukraine. The corresponding decision was supported by 59 deputies at a June 14 session, Lviv Portal reports.
The statement says that a structural subdivision of the Russian Orthodox Church, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate (UOC-MP), is officially operating in Ukraine. Throughout the years of Ukraine’s independence, especially since 2014, when Russia unleashed its aggression toward Ukraine, the UOC-MP has repeatedly openly expressed its anti-Ukrainian and anti-state position, while MP officials over the recent years violated the principles of Ukrainian sovereignty.
“Under the cover of the UOC-MP leadership, the Autonomous Republic of Crimea was annexed, and in Donbas, the cult buildings of the UOC-MP were used as hideouts for Russian armed militants and sabotage and reconnaissance groups, who were seizing our territories and killing Ukrainians. It is not uncommon for priests of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate to refuse to bury Ukrainian servicemen killed in the war zone defending Ukraine’s territorial integrity,” the statement said.
The statement also said that after the illegitimate occupation of Crimea and parts of Donetsk and Luhansk regions, the Russian Federation regularly engaged the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate in discrediting Ukrainian authorities in the international arena, fueling interfaith tensions, and countering autocephaly of Ukrainian Orthodoxy.
The deputies also stressed that since the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, the leadership of the UOC-MP has avoided speaking publicly on war-related issues, and their rhetoric about the Russian president, the Russian church and its leader has remained moderate.
“During the services, the clergy continue to impose on the parishioners narratives of the aggressor and commemorate the head of the ROC, who not only failed to condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but continues to support the Putin regime and blesses the Russian armed forces for the physical elimination of Ukrainians,” said regional council deputies.
Despite the amendments to the Statute of the UOC-MP adopted by the UOC-MP Council on May 27, 2022, this church remains fully affiliated with the ROC in the legal plane. In Constantinople, the existence of the UOC-MP as a separate, full-fledged church is not recognized and it is officially noted that the bishops of the UOC-MP are now listed as “bishops of the Russian Church living in Ukraine.”
“These and other facts are evidence that the activities of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate undermine territorial integrity, unity and statehood of Ukraine, are aimed at supporting the genocide of the Ukrainian people, and pose a direct threat to lives, health, security, honor, and dignity of Ukrainians,” the statement said.
Therefore, deputies of the Lviv Regional Council consider unacceptable the continued existence and operations of the UOC-MP in Ukraine, and call on the state to officially ban the Ukrainian Orthodox Church as a structural unit of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) and religious organizations that are part of the ROC for collaboration and information coordination with the aggressor power – the Russian Federation.
