The Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC-MP) ignores the recommendations of the authorities to confirm the withdrawal from the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC).
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This was reported on June 26 by the State Service for Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Conscience (DESS).
This department said that on May 31, in the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra, they met with members of the episcopate of the UOC-MP. Then the highest clergy of this church asked for recommendations, which, in the opinion of the authorities, showed the withdrawal of the UOC-MP from the ROC.
Such recommendations were formulated and sent the next day after the meeting. Members of the episcopate of the UOC promised to consider these clarifications within two weeks. No responses to the DESS letter were received within two or three weeks, the service notes.
DESS decided to make public the essence of the letter to the leadership of the UOC-MP, since, according to the service, ordinary believers and clerics of the UOC-MP are not familiar with it.
The civil service recommended that the UOC-MP confirm the break in direct ties of subordination in relations between the UOC and the ROC, which became one of the instruments of the war unleashed by Russia against Ukraine.
To this end, DESS suggested that the church undertake the following activities:
- publish an official document of a church authority or a person (persons) authorized to speak on behalf of the UOC, about the withdrawal of the UOC with all its dioceses, synodal institutions, deaneries, monasteries, theological educational institutions, brotherhoods, sisterhoods, parishes and missions from the ROC;
- to the bishops and clerics of the UOC who are members of the episcopate of the ROC, its Synod, synodal institutions, commissions of the Inter-Council Presence, to send statements of withdrawal from them and make these statements public;
- officially notify the Local Orthodox Churches about the withdrawal of the UOC from the ROC;
- impose ecclesiastical punishments and/or expel from the episcopate and clergy persons who were directly involved in the annexation of the occupied Ukrainian lands, voluntarily cooperate with the Russian occupiers, consecrate weapons used to kill Ukrainians;
- organ of church authority, which, according to the internal instructions of the UOC, is entrusted with the duty of expressing its position on topical problems of modern society and assessing the most important events in the field of inter-church, inter-confessional and inter-religious relations, to publish the official position on the teachings of Patriarch Kirill, on washing away the sins of the invaders, in Ukraine, blessing them war against Ukraine, as well as the actions of church authorities to annex the dioceses of the UOC.
Source: Racurs
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