Priest Roman Vonsytky, abbot of the church of the Great Martyr George the Victorious in the village of Kulchyn, Lutsk district, said there are cases where priests of the UOC MP refuse to mourn the fallen Heroes.
The priest shared his thoughts with Channel 12.
“There are such cases, and the worst thing is that these cases do not show the truth of their faith, but wound those people who brought this soldier, they wound and thereby also hit the authority of the entire church, all of Christianity, because people get confused about who did that. They will first hear the news that some priest refused to mourn a fallen soldier before they may find out that he was a priest from the Moscow Patriarchate. The explanation here is very simple – their propaganda claims that the soldiers who are currently fighting there are murderers, that they are killing, that they are sinning grievously, and they are not worthy to even be honored. These are such seasoned priests who really think that way. Therefore, this is once again a direct example that shows we need to fight the influence of the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine. There are absolutely no justifications for this. This is sometimes about the lack of understanding, and sometimes about the desire to provoke a religious conflict in a village,” says the priest.
“It is even to Russia’s advantage that the priests from the Moscow Patriarchate refuse to mourn the fallen soldiers. Then people would assault that priest, which will allow some to say: ‘Look, the priest was beaten for his Orthodox faith.’ People attack him for the fact that he simply refuse to pay honors to a warrior, but the images for the media is already out there,” added Roman Vonsytky.
