The OCU representative, a hierarch from Volyn region Mykhail Zinkevych, believes that a crisis has come in the OCU due to the uncertainty and indecision of the episcopate. This was discussed in his interview to the publication of Glavkom, whose journalist, among other things, asked if changes were possible in the charter of the OCU and whether it threatened Tomos.

“If we are talking about some minor internal Ukrainian issues, no one will pay attention to them. And if the changes concern interchurch relations, for example, the diaspora, then the reaction of Constantinople will be”, Zinkevych believes.

All the questions raised by Filaret Denisenko, including the questions of foreign parishes, are acute, says Zinkevych.

“They are not only the point of view of the honorary patriarch. We (the bishops of the OCU) have no answer to them. In addition to the diaspora, there is also the myrrh. There was a habit, a tradition, a position, if you like, to make it ourselves, but now we can’t. And thirdly, what to do with the myrrh that we have already prepared and taken it from Patriarch Filaret? Do we use it, or what do we do with it? Yet it is a shrine. What to do with it, how to count it now? The real myrrh which we anoint at the time of baptism or the consecration of thrones, or is it no longer the myrrh? How to treat this now? Now no one looks for anything, now the head is in the sand: like this – everything will pass or someone will decide.

Everyone has the right to speak, but everyone is silent, waiting for someone to tell us how we should act. We all have to talk about it. The life of the church is not a question of one person: let’s move it to the Primate or to Filaret, or to someone else. The Church is a common organism, not an organism of some personality… There is no such thing – one answers, and all the others do not answer”, recalled Mikhail Zinkevych.

When asked if these problems would be raised at the next meeting of the “episcopate” of the OCU, he replied: “We must collectively make a decision. There may be two options. The first is the head in the sand, we are now standing in this position. The second is radical: start cooking yourself. What other options are there? There is no third. Of course, we will think about the consequences in both the first option and the second one. The consequences will be in any case, whatever decision we make. But what kind of consequences is another question”.