OCU priest urges Patriarch Bartholomew to step in on UOC situation
Andriy Kovaliov believes that after a ban on the UOC, thousands of parishes will simply go underground.
OCU cleric and religious scholar Andriy Kovaliov, in a comment to Ukrinform, criticized the authorities’ actions in banning the UOC and called for the involvement of Patriarch Bartholomew in resolving the situation.
“A fundamental mistake is to look at sociology, which shows a high level of public support for the OCU and low for the UOC. You cannot evaluate religious organizations as if they were political parties. That would only work if the OCU and the UOC were running in parliamentary elections,” Kovaliov said.
According to him, it is necessary to “look at the number of believers who attend church.” He stressed that the UOC comprises several million Ukrainians.
“Therefore, the challenge now is how to pull these several million Ukrainians out of the Moscow Patriarchate. But there is no answer. You have to engage in dialogue with these people – that is a fact. But no one knows how to communicate with them. They listen to their spiritual leaders, who tell them they are living through persecution. And no one is trying to counter that narrative,” Kovaliov stated.
He believes that as a result of the ban, “the Ukrainian state will get several thousand underground parishes of the Moscow Patriarchate, which will be outside the law.” In Kovaliov’s view, to solve this problem it is necessary to involve Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew.
Earlier, the UOJ reported that after an attempted violent seizure of the cathedral in Chernivtsi, Metropolitan Meletiy appealed to Patriarch Bartholomew.
