Kuraev: I’m not obliged to consider members of OCU schismatics

Andrey Kuraev. Photo: a screenshot of the Youtube channel "Antonyms"

Protodeacon Andrey Kuraev, banned from the priesthood, said in an interview with Anton Krasovsky on the Youtube channel “Antonyms” that he was not obliged to consider the OCU as enemies, heretics and schismatics.

Kuraev recalled the history of the Russian Church in the 15th century, when, due to the union of the Church of Constantinople with Rome, the Uniate Metropolitan Isidor sent by Constantinople was not accepted in Moscow and Metropolitan Jonah was independently elected to the Moscow See. The cleric of the Russian Orthodox Church believes that the resulting breakup of the Moscow and Constantinople Churches, which lasted for more than 140 years, can be compared with the Ukrainian schism. According to Kuraev, the situation when the Russian Church received the status of patriarchy in 1589 echoes the legalization of the Ukrainian schism by the Phanar.

“For 100 years the Greeks suffered a schism, and then they found a reason to forgive him. And then they found a way, even before the Patriarchate in 1560, to say: we did not see anything, we still consider you our children. This is definitely hypocrisy. But why am I saying this? The Greeks did exactly the same thing with the Ukrainians, with Filaret, before our eyes two years ago," Kuraev said.

“This means that I have fewer enemies as the Moscow Patriarchate taught. That when I see the OCU, I am not obliged to consider them enemies, heretics, schismatics,” added the banned protodeacon.

As previously reported, the spokesperson for the OCU Ivan (Eustratiy) Zoria spoke about his meeting with Kuraev at St Michael’s Cathedral in Kyiv when he still belonged to the UOC-KP. According to Zoria, Kuraev “defiantly stood like a pillar and did not react in any way – he did not cross himself, did not bow. That is, he did not react in any way to the service. And then in one of his books, he wrote about his impression that he felt some kind of demonic presence that the murals of the Michael Monastery were ‘saints with narcotic eyes’ and that he was almost forced to flee, as if from the place of ‘demonic presence’, from the St. Michael's Cathedral."

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