Contrary to the conditions of the tomos for the OCU, some of the former parishes of the UOC-KP in Europe continue to declare their belonging to the structure of Epiphany Dumenko. In particular, the activities of these parishes are followed on the Facebook page “The Orthodox Church of Ukraine The German Deanery Frankfurt am Main Mannheim”.
“Five years ago, we, a new small community, then of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyiv Patriarchate, were looking for a place in Catholic and Protestant parishes for worship. It was extremely difficult to find something, because there was a blockage in the city council of churches by our Orthodox “brothers” (by the way, not only Russians). The Lord sent us a true Christian, the head of the Evangelical community Johanneskirche, Mr. Pastor Alexander Bitzel. He knew that there is a war in Ukraine in the east, people have an urgent need for a joint prayer life – he took responsibility and for the sixth year now we have the opportunity to serve in the house of God. By the way, there were two more priests in the formation of our parishes, who proved themselves to be real shepherds. They provided us with help and refuge – a Catholic in Frankfurt and a priest of the Romanian Orthodox Church in Mannheim.
Pastor Bitzel, after twelve years of service in the congregation of Mannheim, had his last divine service there. He was transferred to Frankfurt. On behalf of our parish, we sincerely thanked him for his cordiality and support,” the message says.
As previously reported, the UOC-KP announced that the “German Deanery of the OCU” are impostors, and urged them to return to Filaret’s jurisdiction. How the attitude of the diaspora in Europe to the OCU is legalized from the Phanar’s point of view, is still unknown.