Wrath of Rival Churches at Christmas
2023.01.08 04:12
Wrath of Rival Churches at Christmas
Budrigannews.com – As Ukraine’s main church celebrated a “return” to Kyiv’s Cathedral of the Assumption on Orthodox Christmas Day, shortly after acquiring control of it from a rival church with alleged ties to Russia, worshipers shed tears of happiness.
The golden-domed cathedral is part of the 980-year-old Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra monastery complex, which also includes chapels and administrative buildings. It is on a high hill in the center of Kyiv near the Dnipro River and has a lot of cultural and religious significance.
Due to Russia’s invasion, it has become the focus of a bitter conflict between Ukraine’s Orthodox communities.
On Saturday, the cathedral’s ornate interior was packed with members of the largest Orthodox Church in Ukraine, the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU), to hear the cathedral’s first ever service in Ukrainian.
“With strong feelings during these days of celebration, we ask God: Help us defeat the adversary who caused our home to be filled with sorrow. Vadym Storozhyk, a 50-year-old Kyiv city councillor, said the Christmas service meant to him the “return” of a holy site under Ukraine’s control. “Help us to finally drive out the foreign invasion from the land of Ukraine,” said Metropolitan Epifaniy I of the OCU.
“We return to our holy places, to our (spiritual) sources thirty years after renewing our history and gaining our independence,” he stated.
Oleksandr Tkachenko, the culture minister of Ukraine, shared a message on Facebook (NASDAQ:) after he and the speaker of Ukraine’s parliament attended the service. celebrating what he claimed was the conclusion of Moscow’s “capture” of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra for three and a half centuries.
Since the 17th century, the Orthodox Church of Ukraine has been subordinate to Moscow in its various forms.
Tkachenko gave a hint at a big change to Ukraine’s Christmas celebrations, which have always been held on January 7, the same day as Russia and other Orthodox-majority nations.
He wrote, “I hope that all the churches will reach an agreement this year and that we will celebrate Christmas together on December 25.”
There are approximately 30 million Orthodox believers in Ukraine, who belong to various church communities. Many Ukrainians have joined the OCU because they believe it is more pro-Ukrainian than its rival, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC), even though the war is now in its 11th month.
Until May 2022, the United Orthodox Church (UOC) was officially a part of the Russian Orthodox Church. However, due to the Moscow church’s support for the war, the two organizations announced their separation.
In an Orthodox Christmas message on Saturday, President Vladimir Putin praised the Russian Orthodox Church for supporting Moscow’s forces fighting in Ukraine and referred to it as an important social stabilizing force.
The UOC denies allegations of pro-Russian views and direct collaboration with Moscow from Ukraine’s government, majority of Ukraine’s press, and civil society despite cutting ties. The UOC claims that its adversaries in government are conducting a political witch hunt against it.
After the end of its lease with the government, the UOC was forced out of the cathedral.
Vasyl Rudnytskyi, an OCU priest, looked stunned as he walked toward the building’s gates amid the deafening peal of bells. The handover of the cathedral caught many people off guard.
He stated, “I didn’t even consider the possibility of this two weeks ago, nor the fact that we would celebrate Jesus’ birth in such a significant location for the Ukrainian people.”
Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, the global head of the Orthodox Church, recognized the OCU as Ukraine’s official branch of Orthodoxy in 2019. Bartholomew is based in Istanbul, which is also known as Constantinople in the Orthodox Christian world.
The Orthodox Church in Russia was enraged by that decision because the Orthodox leadership had previously recognized the UOC as the legitimate Ukrainian church when it was ruled by Moscow.
The UOC was dismayed when a number of its worshipers and some of its clergy moved to the OCU. The other church, according to both, is illegitimate by canon. The UOC maintained control of over 12,000 churches, including the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra complex, despite the fact that the OCU soon had more members than the old church.
The Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) denies being referred to as the “Moscow Patriarchate” by the government and local media. The United Orthodox Church (UOC) denied to Reuters that the results of a poll conducted in August showed that the UOC would retain only 20% of its worshippers in 2021, implying that many of them would have left the church since the invasion.
Metropolitan Kliment, the UOC’s spokesperson, stated to Reuters that the government’s actions were a “provocation intended to irritate and humiliate millions of UOC worshippers.”
Lyudmyla, a worshipper who is 69 years old, stated that she feared the government would be biased against the UOC.
“This does not suit me. Right now, we need to be united rather than divided. She added, “And this could cause some kind of religious division in our society.”
The Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra and other UOC monasteries and churches were the subject of numerous searches by Ukrainian security forces, and the police have announced a number of investigations.
The UOC denied that the church’s premises contained pro-Russian literature or that Russian citizens were being housed there.
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