Metropolitan Oleksandr (Drabynko) of Pereyaslav and Vishneve, a hierarch of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) commented on the canonical status of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) of the Moscow Patriarchate.
In an interview for the Rizni Liudy project, the hierarch noted that the concept of “an independent self-governing church with the rights of wide autonomy”, as it is spelled in the letter of Patriarch Alexiy II of 1990, does not exist in canon law.
“In canonical Orthodoxy… there is no such status as an ‘independent self-governing church with the rights of wide autonomy’. There is an autocephalous church, there is an autonomous church, there are statuses of churches, there is the status of an exarchate, but the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, as we call it, not of the Moscow Patriarchate, as it refers to itself today, is now, from the point of view of canon law, a gathering of dioceses of the Russian Orthodox Church on the territory of the state of Ukraine,” he said.
The Metropolitan emphasized that the UOC (MP) does not have any of the three canonical statuses: “…none of these three statuses is inherent today in the structure called the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.”
The Metropolitan of the OCU explained that in order to receive autocephaly, the UOC (MP) must get it from the Patriarchate of Constantinople, as the OCU did.
“In order to obtain the status of autocephaly, it is necessary to obtain it from the mother church, as part of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church did, the former Kyiv Patriarchate, the former Autocephalous Church and a part of the bishops, that is me and Bishop Simeon from the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, received it from the Mother Church of Constantinople, which on October 10, 2018, restored the status of the Kyiv Metropoly of the Constantinople Patriarchate in Ukraine, which had been usurped in 1686. So that act of 1686 was revoked, Constantinople restored its jurisdiction over the Ukrainian Church, and granted autocephaly to this part of the Ukrainian Church. This was the process,” Metropolitan Oleksandr explained.
He noted that the Patriarchate of Constantinople, as the Mother Church of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, has the right to decide on its status.
“He who thinks that he is in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church today, because they are not there in the Moscow Patriarchate. They are in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church restored by the Patriarchate of Constantinople, but they don’t know it yet.”
The hierarch also emphasized that the rights of broad autonomy granted to the UOC (MP) by the Charter of 1990 do not testify to its canonical autonomy: “The rights of broad autonomy do not equate to the status of autonomy.”
According to the metropolitan, from the point of view of canon law, the UOC (MP) is part of the Moscow Patriarchate: “According to canon law, the UOC is part of the Moscow Patriarchate and is perceived as such by other local churches.
