UOC hierarch appeals to Ukrainian religious leaders over LGBT film festival
“Holy days are no time for mockery,” Metropolitan Luke emphasizes.
Metropolitan Luke of Zaporizhzhia and Melitopol has called on religious leaders to speak out against the LGBT film festival scheduled to take place in Kyiv. “Why is there no united voice from the Orthodox, Catholics, Greek Catholics, Jews, Muslims, and Protestants – the voice of reason, faith, and conscience? Why is faith silent when unbelief screams?” the metropolitan wrote on his Telegram channel.
The UOC hierarch pointed out that during a period of intense spiritual significance – Holy Week and Bright Easter – an LGBT film festival will be held in Kyiv, promoting a lifestyle contrary to Christian teaching.
“Good Friday is the day when the entire Christian world remembers Christ’s Sacrificial Death on the Cross for the salvation of humanity from sin. Easter is the celebration of victory over death, a feast of light, purity, and life. To use these days to advance an ideology that contradicts Christian morality is deeply disrespectful not only to believers but to the very spiritual essence of the human person,” he stressed.
According to the bishop, the festival is a blatant affront to followers of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, as April is a sacred month for all three faiths – with Easter for Christians, Passover for Jews, and Ramadan for Muslims. Holding a provocative event during such days is an insult to all three religious communities at once.
“When a festival that openly undermines moral foundations takes place in the very heart of the capital during days sacred to millions of believers – Christians, Jews, Muslims – it raises a disturbing and legitimate question: where is the voice of ‘the greatest spiritual leaders of Ukraine from various denominations and religious organizations’? Where are the statements, pastoral appeals, and calls for respect toward the sacred?” the hierarch asks.
Metropolitan Luke also notes that many religious leaders today are “busy supporting legislative initiatives aimed at the legal ‘killing’ of my Mother Church – the Ukrainian Orthodox Church – with their silent consent to the forceful and unlawful seizures of its churches, the beating of faithful parishioners defending these churches, and the triumphant labeling of persecution against the UOC as ‘unprecedented religious freedom.’”
“Why is there no united voice from the Orthodox, Catholics, Greek Catholics, Jews, Muslims, and Protestants – the voice of reason, faith, and conscience? Why is faith silent when unbelief screams? The world will not become better if we remain silent. It will become better when people of light begin to speak – clearly, courageously, lovingly, but without fear,” Metropolitan Luke adds.
Stressing that his appeal is not a call to hatred or violence, he asks for respect toward millions of believers.
“Do not turn holy days into a battlefield of cultural and spiritual conflict. There are many other dates and venues. But Easter, Passover, and Ramadan are not the time for such events,” the metropolitan concludes.
As the UOJ previously reported, an LGBT film festival is set to open in Kyiv on Good Friday.
