The head of the Department for External Church Relations of the UOC, metropolitan Mitrofan (Yurchuk) of Lugansk and Alchevsk, commented on the actions of the Ukrainian Embassy in Serbia, which posted on its social media accounts the text of a “brotherly greeting” by Serhiy (Epiphany) Dumenko to the newly elected Patriarch of Serbia Porfirije, UOJ reports.

Metropolitan Mitrofan said that this means only one thing – the Ukrainian authorities at the state level support the pseudo-religious organization “OCU”, thereby violating the Constitution and the Law on Freedom of Conscience, which state that all religions, confessions and religious organizations are equal before the law.

“According to the Constitution, the state is obliged to be equidistant from all confessions. But in practice it turns out differently. It turns out that the OCU is “more equal than everyone else,” the bishop noted. – For some reason, our Embassy in Serbia does not post the congratulations of His Beatitude Onuphry to Patriarch Porfirije (on its accounts – Ed.). This once again testifies to the fact that laws and the Constitution are not observed in Ukraine, everything is very sad, but we got used to it.”

The chairman of the DECR UOC doubted that Dumenko’s congratulations would force the Serbian Patriarch to recognize the “OCU”, since the newly elected Patriarch stands on canonical principles and stands for church unity.

“It is unlikely that this congratulation by Dumenko will have any consequences for the OCU, all the more, knowing the position of the late Patriarch Irenaeus and many bishops of the Serbian Orthodox Church – they are categorically against the OCU. The newly elected Patriarch has repeatedly expressed that he does not consider the OCU even members of the Orthodox Church,” the hierarch added.