State Ethnopolitics publishes requirements for UOC to break-off with ROC

Head of the State Ethnopolitics Service Viktor Yelensky. Photo: DESS

DESS has published its clarifications to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church regarding the evidence it should provide to demonstrate the UOC's separation from the Russian Church. The text was made public after a meeting between the DESS leadership and the UOC bishops, which took place on May 31, 2023, with the blessing of His Beatitude Onuphry. The State Ethnopolitics Service called for the following evidence of the UOC's separation from the ROC:

• to disclose an official document from a church authority or person(s) authorized to speak on behalf of the UOC, regarding the UOC's withdrawal, along with all its eparchies, synodal institutions, deaneries, monasteries, spiritual educational institutions, brotherhoods, sisterhoods, parishes, and missions, from the ROC;
• for the bishops and clergy of the UOC who are part of the ROC's episcopate, its Synod, synodal institutions, and Inter-Council Presence commissions to submit statements of withdrawal and make these statements public.
  to officially notify the Local Orthodox Churches of the UOC's separation from the ROC;
• to impose ecclesiastical penalties and/or exclude from the episcopate and clergy individuals who have directly participated in the annexation of Ukrainian territories, willingly collaborate with Russian occupiers and bless weapons used to kill Ukrainians.
• the church authority responsible, according to the internal regulations of the UOC, for expressing its position on current issues in society and assessing significant events in the sphere of inter-church, inter-confessional, and inter-religious relations should make an official statement regarding Patriarch Kirill's teaching on absolving sins of the invaders who will die in Ukraine, his blessing the war against Ukraine, as well as the actions of church authorities regarding the annexation of UOC eparchies.

As stated in the text, "Such actions could indicate a breakdown in the direct relationship of subordination between the UOC and the Russian Orthodox Church, which has become one of the instruments of the war unleashed by Russia against Ukraine."

As reported, KDAiS found DESS’s expertise on the UOC inconsistent.

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