The religious procession, which the media has been trumpeted about in the past month, ended with a peaceful prayer on Volodymyr’s Hill in Kyiv. There were no excesses, but since the Pan-Slavic Council on Crete the Russian Orthodox Church has been trying to show, with the help of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate), that it dominates in Ukraine, whereas experts and opinion polls say this domination is in fact illusory. Yet this procession managed to project a certain image, which was the main goal of the Moscow clergy.
To counterbalance this, the president of Ukraine called on July 28 for establishing a united Local Church. But the Ukrainian clergy still remain divided over who is larger and more senior, although sociological surveys show that more and more Orthodox Ukrainians favor a united local autocephalous church. President Petro Poroshenko says he hopes Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew will help establish this kind of church in Ukraine.
“We know that His Holiness has made a lot of efforts to convene the Pan-Orthodox Council,” the president said on Volodymyr’s Hill in Kyiv, “and I am very pleased that the council was successful and passed important resolutions and documents.” Poroshenko is convinced that Bartholomew ponders over helping our church in this matter and said that “Bartholomew is the only one who can help Orthodox Ukrainians unite and establish the canonical status of the Ukrainian Church as part of the global Orthodoxy.”
“It is very good that our leadership wishes to endorse the idea of establishing a united local church,” religion expert Liudmyla Fylypovych comments to The Day, “but Poroshenko’s request will not be the main factor for Bartholomew to decide to grant autocephaly to the Ukrainian church. They have laws and rules of their own. What is needed is a clear message from Ukrainian believers themselves. But those who took part in the Moscow Patriarchate-inspired procession oppose unification. Therefore, Bartholomew will refrain from making radical decisions. We should always work to put across the idea of Kyiv as a historical, cultural, and spiritual center, where baptism was in fact held. In other words, it is Kyivites who were baptized, not the residents of Moscow, Vyazma, or Surozh. We should persuade people that it was Rus’, not Muscovy.”
The unification of churches continues, albeit slowly. Incidentally, this is being done “from below,” when certain churches break away from the Moscow Patriarchate. For example, according to media reports, 11 Autocephalous Church parishes in Kolomyia raion have unanimously decided to be under the jurisdiction of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, Kyiv Patriarchate (UOC KP). These temples were made part of the UOC KP’s Kolomyia Eparchy under the auspices of His Eminence Yulian (Hatala). In the opinion of local believers, the Autocephalous Church is a satellite of the Moscow Patriarchate, which tends to disunite rather than unite. Six more parishes in Kolomyia raion were expected to discuss this question on July 31.
On July 28, the UOC KP organized a procession to celebrate the Baptism of Rus’-Ukraine Feast. The event started at St. Volodymyr’s Cathedral. From the very morning, hiding in the shade of trees and the cathedral, thousands of people waited for the end of the festive liturgy in order to march to Volodymyr’s Hill and offer a public prayer there. But, in contrast to asceticism and certain tension during the Moscow Patriarchate church procession, caused by unprecedented security measures, participants in Thursday’s religious event beamed an altogether different mood. People wearing festive and white embroidered shirts, happy faces, traditional religious songs, Ukrainian and UPA flags in the hands of volunteer soldiers – is not the atmosphere of a national holiday? This proves that Ukrainians know the true essence of the baptism of Rus’-Ukraine 1,028 years ago.
“For me personally, Rus’ Baptism Day is a Ukrainian feast because Orthodoxy finally came to this country thanks to St. Volodymyr. It is just the time for us to enhance and emphasize our Ukrainian spirit,” says Ms. Svitlana from Zhytomyr, who comes with her friends annually to celebrate this event. “I am pleased to see the people who have joined this procession, the smiling children in embroidered shirts, who are running happily around – we are really feeling the vibes of a feast.”
Ms. Svitlana says that, like millions of Orthodox Ukrainians, she looks forward to autocephaly being granted to the UOC. “The Ukrainians need a national autocephalous Orthodox church, independent of the Moscow Patriarchate, so that the UOC MP no longer reiterates that ‘only they are canonical,’” she adds.
However, like many other Rus’-Ukraine Baptism celebrants The Day managed to interview, Ms. Svitlana did not oppose the UOC MP-led procession that had reached Kyiv last Wednesday – everybody has the right to pray, but the trouble is that certain political forces in and out of Ukraine are trying to cash in on this topic.
UOC KP priests are also taking a lenient view of the Moscow Patriarchate-inspired procession. “We saw people who had walked many kilometers in order to pray. That there are speculations about this is a political problem for the government and the opposition to address,” priest Roman from Okhtyrka says. He stresses that a lot of Ukrainian patriots rallied around the Ukrainian Orthodox Church as soon as Thursday for the only purpose: “to pray for the state and the boys who are defending it from the aggressor at the front and to knit together and strengthen the community.” This is perhaps one more striking difference between the Kyiv and Moscow patriarchates, for the priests and parishioners of the latter are afraid to say out loud that Russia is committing aggression against Ukraine.
“A religious procession is always a wonderful thing, but it is too bad that this one carries slogans imposed by the aggressor, while Opposition Bloc members are saying they pray ‘for the end of a fratricidal war,’” priest Oleksandr from Pyrohiv says. “There is no fratricidal war in Ukraine. All the sound-minded people can see what is really going on in our state. We must pray that the enemy goes away from our land – only then we shall reconcile with each other and rally together, and things will be all right.”
But he takes a somewhat broader view of the Moscow Patriarchate-sponsored procession. “The UOC MP procession might be a demonstration to the Constantinople Patriarchate that Russian Orthodoxy is strong in Ukraine and has a lot of followers,” he says.
In his opinion, it is symbolic and important that Rus’-Ukraine Baptism Day is being celebrated today, while the Constantinople Patriarchate is considering the possibility of recognizing the UOC. “Now, more than 1,000 years on, the granting of autocephaly and recognition by ecumenical Orthodoxy would mean removal of the labels the Moscow Patriarchate has been attaching to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, such as ‘graceless,’ ‘non-canonical,’ etc. Yes, we still remain unrecognized by global Orthodoxy, but it is precisely the Muscovite church that was not recognized as a local Orthodox church for the longest time – over 150 years,” he says.
“Constantinople is taking into account the efforts Ukrainian Orthodoxy is making and the opposition the Moscow Patriarchate is offering in the wake of the chauvinistic Russian imperial policy,” the Reverend Oleksandr continues. “Therefore, recognition will come by itself when the people are unanimous in this matter, when they understand in what kind of a country they want to live, and when the government follows the people’s wishes.”
“We need a united local, independent of Moscow, church,” the UOC KP Primate, Patriarch Filaret, said during the Kyivan Rus’-Ukraine Baptism Day celebrations. “If the church continues to depend on Moscow, there will be no Ukrainian state. Knowing this, Putin expects the Russian church in Ukraine to help Russia subdue Ukraine. Favorable conditions are being created now for recognizing the Ukrainian Orthodox Church as independent, which will let it enter the family of local Orthodox churches. We must know that our state can only be strong and indestructible if it has solid spiritual foundations, and the church was a solid foundation for Kyivan Rus’ and Ukraine. This is why our enemy, Russia, divided our Ukrainian church into two parts, knowing that if there were no strong spiritual foundation, there would be no Ukrainian state. But we are aware of this and are therefore trying in every possible way to unite all of Ukrainian Orthodoxy into a single church.”
