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Local Council of UOC-KP Calls Heads of Local Orthodox Churches to Recognize its Autocephaly

15.07.2008, [11:49] // UOC-KP //

Kyiv—The Local Council of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church – Kyivan Patriarchate (UOC-KP), held in Kyiv on 11 July 2008 on the occasion of the 900th anniversary of St. Michael’s Golden Domed Monastery in Kyiv and the 1020th anniversary of the baptism of Kyivan Rus passed an address to the heads of the Local Orthodox Churches calling them to “see the situation in Ukraine not through the distorted mirror of Moscow, but with their own eyes.” RISU's Ukrainian-language web page posted this story on 14 July, 2008.

The UOC-KP stresses that “the present leadership of the Moscow Patriarchate is not able or willing to bring peace and unity to the Church in Ukraine. That leadership resorted to the division of the Church in Ukraine for the sake of retaining administrative power, and now, they even go so far as to threaten to disturb the unity of the whole Universal Patriarchate.”

According to the Local Council of UOC-KP, solving the problem of the Ukrainian Church and its recognition as local and autocephalous will considerably reduce the power of the Moscow Patriarchate to claim primacy in the Universal Orthodoxy and provoke conflicts.

UOC-KP accuses representatives of the Moscow Patriarchate of “continuously spreading disinformation of the real state of affairs in the Ukrainian Church.”

“We [hereby] ask the Mother-Church to objectively examine the situation in Ukraine and inform other local churches about it. We address You, Holy and blessed Heads of Churches, with a request to examine and evaluate the situation in the Ukrainian Church independently and not under the influence of the Moscow disinformation. We ask you to support the Constantinople Patriarchate in its aspiration to stop the division of the Orthodox Church in Ukraine, even if representatives of Moscow Patriarchate oppose this. We address you with a request to recognize the autocephaly of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which has all the canonical, historic, and pastoral grounds for its full-value autocephalous existence. It is our request that these addresses and requests of ours be considered at the meeting of the heads of the local Orthodox Churches to be held in October of this year and that our Church be accepted in the Eucharistic communion and its autocephaly be recognized. Thousands of pastors and millions of Orthodox believers in Ukraine expect this from you!” stated the address.