Kyiv, Ukraine
Reuters
A Ukrainian branch of the Orthodox church accused of ties with Russia was expelled from the premises of two places of worship on Wednesday amid rising public anger against the organisation 14 months into Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
Ukrainian police officers stand next to St George’s Cathedral of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, accused of being linked to Moscow, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in Lviv, Ukraine, on 5th April, 2023. PICTURE: Reuters/Roman Baluk
RUSSIA DEMANDS THAT UKRAINE FREE ORTHODOX ‘MARTYR’ CLERIC FROM HOUSE ARREST
Russia on Wednesday demanded that Ukraine free a top Orthodox cleric placed under house arrest by a Kyiv court this month in connection with allegations he had glorified Russia’s invasion and stoked religious divisions.
Metropolitan Pavlo, the abbot of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra (monastery) in central Kyiv, is a senior official in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church which Ukrainian authorities have accused of being pro-Russian and of collaborating with Moscow, charges the UOC denies.
Abbot Pavlo, Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra Metropolitan, of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, accused of being linked to Moscow, attends a court hearing, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine, on 1st April, 2023. PICTURE: Reuters/Viacheslav Ratynskyi/File photo
Pavlo, who the court ordered to wear an electronic bracelet, banned from attending church services, and ordered to spend the next two months living in a village outside Kyiv according to Russia’s TASS news agency, has denied wrongdoing and called the case against him political.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry called on Ukraine to free him immediately.
“We are deeply worried about the fate of Metropolitan Pavlo, who is known to be under house arrest and in electronic shackles. He is taking on the likeness of a martyr for the Orthodox faith,” the ministry said in a statement.
“We demand the immediate release of Metropolitan Pavlo and the provision of appropriate medical care for him.”
Pavlo had been living in accommodation in the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra, a 980-year old monastery complex the government says the church must leave, something it has so far refused to do.
Ukrainian prosecutors have said his house arrest and electronic bracelet are precautionary measures while the case against him continues.
Sixty-one UOC clergy have had criminal cases opened against them since the start of 2022 with seven found guilty.
The UOC has been accused of maintaining links to the Russian Orthodox Church, which has publicly backed what Moscow calls its “special military operation” in Ukraine.
The Russian Orthodox Church used to be the UOC’s parent church, but the UOC says it broke all ties in May, 2022.
Ukraine has about 30 million Orthodox believers, divided between the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and two other Orthodox Churches, one of which is the autocephalous, or self-governing, Ukrainian Orthodox Church.
– ANDREW OSBORN, Moscow, Russia/Reuters
The evictions come amid spiralling tensions between the Ukrainian Orthodox Church on one side and Ukraine’s government and large parts of society on the other.
Kyiv accuses the UOC of preserving ties with the Russian Orthodox Church, which has supported Moscow’s invasion. The UOC says it broke all associations with the Russian Church in May, 2022.
In the village of Zadubrivka in the western Chernivtsi region, furious local residents forced their way in and evicted the UOC from the local church after they said priests refused to admit a funeral procession for a fallen soldier into the church, public broadcaster Suspilne reported.
The local UOC branch said the church had been stormed by “bandits”.
In Lviv, worshippers gathered in the city’s main UOC church to vote to transfer the church to the rival Orthodox Church of Ukraine, which is favoured by Kyiv and counts the majority of Orthodox Christians in Ukraine as members.
Police had to separate quarrelling supporters of the UOC and OCU inside the church.
The local branch of the UOC said on its website that the vote in the Lviv church was staged by “unknown people” who came in under the direction of a senior regional official. It denied that the parish had decided to switch.
A 2019 Ukrainian law allows individual churches to switch denominations if two-thirds of parishioners vote for the change.
Local Governor Maksym Kozytskyi said the legal process for switching the Lviv church over to the OCU was ongoing, and that he supported the change.
Wednesday’s events follow moves by local residents and authorities to change the denomination of churches in two other west Ukrainian regions over the past week.
According to a Ukrainian pollster, the UOC, which recognised the Russian Orthodox Church as its parent organisation until last May, three months into Russia’s full-scale invasion, has lost over three-quarters of its pre-invasion believers.
Ukraine’s government has accused the UOC of retaining ties with Moscow despite the war, and has opened criminal cases against over 60 of its clergy on suspicion of crimes including treason and collaboration with Russia.
The UOC says it has broken all ties with Moscow and that it has not been shown evidence for the cases against its clergy.
Public broadcaster footage from Zadubrivka showed a UOC priest and several other men leaving the church to cries of “shame” and “Muscovite priests – get out” from the assembled crowd.
“Why didn’t you let a fallen hero, the third from this village, into the house of God?!” a bearded man bellowed at an ashen-faced priest holding a wooden cross.
Police separate supporter of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine and believers of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, accused of being linked to Moscow, in St George’s Cathedral, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in Lviv, Ukraine, on 5th April, 2023. PICTURE: Reuters/Roman Baluk
The footage showed that the soldier’s funeral procession, led by clergy from the rival OCU, was then able to proceed into the church.
Tensions around the UOC have spiked over the past two weeks as authorities seek to evict the church from a historic Kyiv monastery. Kyiv has also put one of the UOC’s most senior figures on trial for justifying Russia’s invasion and inflaming religious tensions.
