Leaders of OCU and UGCC hold a joint memorial service

On 22 November 2025, the heads of the OCU and the UGCC, Serhii Dumenko and Sviatoslav Shevchuk, presided over a joint memorial service at the Holodomor Memorial in Kyiv. About forty clerics from both structures took part in the religious ceremony, along with Catholic Bishop Oleksandr Yazlovetskyi.

This was a full joint liturgical service during which Dumenko and Shevchuk alternated liturgical exclamations and performed the censing.

It should be recalled that in Orthodoxy several apostolic rules and canons forbid such prayerful communion. For example, Canon 45 states: “A bishop, or presbyter, or deacon who merely prays together with heretics shall be excommunicated. But if he allows them to perform anything as clergy, he shall be deposed.”

Earlier, the UOJ reported that, according to Shevchuk, the UGCC is waiting for Saint Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv to become the cathedral of a unified Church.