Veterans of Ukraine wrote an open letter in support of the UOC

Kiev-Pechersk Lavra

Veterans of Ukraine wrote an open letter in support of the UOC. The document was published on September 20, 2018 on the organization's official Facebook page.

"Today we are witnessing a dangerous confrontation in Ukrainian society on religious grounds," the letter said. “In the media, it is positioned as a struggle of the Ukrainian faith, the Church of the Kiev Patriarchate against the enemy, the Church of the aggressor, i.e. ‘Moscow Patriarchate’. The information field of Ukraine makes daily accusations against the latter, and together with it accuse those who support the UOC, of the lack of patriotism, destructiveness, and hostility."

In this regard, veterans of Ukraine express their support to the clergy of the UOC, headed by His Beatitude Metropolitan Onufry.

"We declare with full responsibility that the many years of experience of cooperation between our veteran organizations and the UOC testifies to the opposite characteristics of this religious organization than the one presented in the media," the statement says. “Representatives of the UOC episcopate, clergy and flock carry out a systematic and significant program of spiritual care and material assistance to Ukrainian veterans, war veterans, labor veterans and pensioners. Volunteers and priests of the Synodal Military Department implement various charitable actions in the territory of all Ukraine and directly in the zones of alienation and ATO."

The letter also notes that an obvious and outrageous attempt is to finally destroy the Church by making her and her laity exiles on their own land, by creating a parallel religious organization, the so-called Local Church.

"Quantitatively and qualitatively throughout the history of national independence, the UOC has proved that it is a self-sufficient and full-fledged Church of the Ukrainian people in the arena of world Orthodoxy. The desire to somehow shake her spiritual authority from the outside by giving autocephaly to some other community is considered unfair, unjustified and artificial," the letter says.

The organization "Veterans of Ukraine" is a voluntary All-Ukrainian civil organization of veterans of the Great Patriotic War, other wars and military conflicts, veterans of labor, military service and internal bodies. The organization was established in 1987.

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