The Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which is the national Church of Ukraine, the Church of the majority of the Ukrainian population, has been in a critical situation for several years now, said Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, head of the Department for External Church Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate, according to Patriarchia.ru.

“The previous president of Ukraine, Poroshenko, decided to create a new“ church ”completely independent of the Russian Orthodox Church. For this, he used the services of Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople. The new structure was created on the basis of a schismatic group that has existed since the early 90s and has no legitimacy from the point of view of Orthodox canons – it is just a group of impostors who have been declared a “church”. And the canonical Church, which has more than 12 thousand parishes, several hundred monasteries, more than a hundred bishops and millions of believers, has actually been outlawed,” said the DECR chairman.

In particular, he mentioned the Law No. 2662-VIII, adopted by the Verkhovna Rada, on the basis of which the authorities were going to forcibly rename the Ukrainian Orthodox Church into the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine. “But this is not the Russian Church, this is a Church made up of Ukrainians,” the hierarch emphasized. “They have Ukrainian passports, they were born in Ukraine, and they are patriots of their country.” At the moment, the application of this provision of the law to the canonical Church has been stopped, but the law itself has not been canceled.

Speaking about why such actions on the part of the state in relation to the Church are unacceptable, Metropolitan Hilarion pointed out: “First, because the Church chooses its own name. Secondly, because any forced renaming of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church under current conditions will lead to the fact that it will have to re-register all its dioceses, parishes, which means that in each specific place pressure will be exerted on believers, on priests, on bishops. so that they re-register as a schismatic structure.”