Petro Yushchenko, the brother of Ukraine’s President Viktor Yushchenko, has taken the lead of an organization known as A National Church for Ukraine.The group’s aim is to re-unite the country’s splintered Orthodox communities.
“This organization aims to unite the efforts of society, of all Orthodox faithful,” said Archimandrite Yevstratii Zoria, a spokesman for the Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Kiev patriarchate, one of the three groups competing for the claim to represent the Orthodox faithful of the country.
A spokesman for a contending group, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Moscow patriarchate, expressed misgivings about the new initiative. He said that representatives of his group had not been invited to the inaugural meeting of Petro Yushchenko’s lay organization, and said that A National Church for Ukraine is “just another attempt of the Kiev patriarchate to get closer to the government.”
The Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Moscow patriarchate, which retains close ties to the Russian Orthodox Church, has consistently charged that the independent Kiev patriarchate relies on support from the government.
The call for support for a single Orthodox body in Ukraine presents a new challenge for the country’s Eastern-rite Catholic leadership.
Cardinal Lubomyr Husar, the Major Archbishop of the Ukrainian Catholic Church, has suggested in the past that all of the Eastern churches in Ukraine should unite in a single Ukrainian patriarchate.
Kyiv – Ukrainian National Deputy Petro Yushchenko, brother of President Viktor Yushchenko, will head the civic organization A National Church for Ukraine, created on 3 March 2007. The goal of the group is to contribute to the development of the unification process of Ukrainian Orthodoxy and the creation of a single national church.
“We are calling upon everyone who supports the idea of national [“pomisna”] Ukrainian Orthodoxy to create regional centers of the organization A National Church for Ukraine,” said Petro Yushchenko.
“This organization aims to unite the efforts of society, of all Orthodox faithful. Ukraine has never before had any similar civic organization whose members were people who sincerely want to unite the Orthodox church,” said Archimandrite Yevstratii (Zoria), press secretary of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Kyivan Patriarchate (UOC-KP).
According to Vasyl Anisimov, press secretary of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Moscow Patriarchate (UOC-MP), representatives of the UOC-MP did not participate in the inaugural conference of A National Church for Ukraine.
“We were told that it was a closed session. We were not invited, despite the fact that its initiators and participants hunger for a single national Orthodox church. In my opinion, the creation of the organization A National Church for Ukraine is just another attempt of the UOC-KP to get closer to the government and, in this way, to exert pressure on the UOC-MP,” said Anisimov.
Link: http://www.eizvestia.com/articles/43/0/11117/
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