Shostatsky: We have a real personnel shortage in the OCU
Metropolitan Simeon (Shostatsky) said that OCU clerics have to travel to as many as five parishes over a weekend so that believers are not left without services.
Metropolitan Simeon (Shostatsky), speaking on the Khmelnytskyi television channel TV7plus, spoke about the acute shortage of clergy in the OCU. According to him, the problem has arisen in part because when communities transfer from the UOC, their priests often refuse to move into this structure.
“Today we have a personnel shortage, you could say,” Shostatsky stated.
He explained that whereas previously one UOC cleric typically served in one or two parishes, after the “transitions” many OCU “priests” are now forced to pastor up to five parishes simultaneously.
“They try over Saturday and Sunday to visit all of them and celebrate services so that believers are not left without common conciliar prayer. In one parish they serve the Liturgy, in another – the Typica, in a third – a moleben, a kathisma, and so on,” Shostatsky complained.
Speaking about why many parishes and their rectors are in no hurry to join the OCU, he claimed that UOC priests “do not want to leave their comfort zone.”
At the same time, Shostatsky called on UOC clergy “not to cling to the lousy sheepskin coat of the Moscow Patriarchate.”
Commenting on how he came to serve in Khmelnytskyi, Shostatsky said that “by our mutual agreement with Bishop Pavlo, my predecessor on the Khmelnytskyi see, we carried out a rotation.”
Earlier, the UOJ reported that Shostatsky complained to Athonite monks about “problems” with UOC priests.
