Parishioners of the UOC (MP) always expect important decisions or statements from the Synod but nothing happens. They observe the appointment of new bishops, the transfer of hegumens and vicars, but they see no concrete changes.
Hieromonk Onufriy, who recently switched from the UOC(MP) to the OCU, told about this in an interview with the Spiritual Front of Ukraine.
He decried as “cunning” the statements by representatives of the UOC (MP) claiming they do not belong to the Russian Orthodox Church, but at the same time do not consider themselves an autocephalous church because that would be a “split.”
“This is a lie. That’d deceiving people who are pro-Ukrainian and who are not politically focused. That is, they say that they are not with the Russian Orthodox Church, but they are not autocephalous either. How can that be?” says the archimandrite.
“I was asked this question by a priest I know, and I told him… He insists so much that the UOC (MP, – ed.) is an independent autocephalous church, that they have separated from the Moscow Patriarchate, and that is why he does not understand why they are being ‘oppressed.’ I asked him one question:
‘Which of the other leaders of the autocephalous Orthodox Churches, at least one, at the grand entrance (a solemn moment during the Divine Liturgy, – ed.) commemorates Metropolitan Onufriy as his equal?” No one,’” explained the cleric of the OCU.
This shows that the UOC (MP) does not have an equal status in the eyes of other autocephalous churches. These thoughts of Archimandrite Onufriy reflect the problematic and unstable state of the UOC (MP) and the non-recognition of its “autocephaly” in the wider Orthodox world.
