The website of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra published an appeal by the monastics of the UOC, who gathered on July 15, 2021, to Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople.

The appeal noted that 310 participants of the monastic congress from 258 monasteries and 56 sketes, households and communities of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church gathered in the great Holy Dormition Pochaev Lavra in order not only to discuss the pressing issues of monastic life, but also to respond to those processes in world Orthodoxy, which undermine the unity of the Orthodox Church:

“For us the greatest pain and the greatest sorrow were those treacherous actions that you, as the first among equal bishops of the Orthodox world, carried out to the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church. We are at a loss as to what motivated your decisions, but we see with our own eyes what they led to. With confusion in our hearts and sorrow, we, monastics of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, ask you, Patriarch Bartholomew, how your morality accepts the level of embarrassment that your decision brought to our country: the seizure of churches, the beating of ordinary believers, discrimination of our pastors and flock at the state level, calls for the extermination of our clergy? Do you understand that on the slope of your life you became the reason for the division of the one people of God, in which, according to the word of the Apostle Paul: “there is neither Greek nor Jew, nor circumcision, nor uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free, but all in Christ to all” (Col. 3:11)? To please what anti-church forces did you commit an unprecedented crime against the Church? Do you realize that into the bloody confrontation that sows grief among our people, you have introduced new seeds of religious struggle, from which the Lord saved us earlier.

In this situation, we, monastics of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, appeal to you to assess the consequences of your actions and reconsider your decision. Become the first bishop and father recognized by all Orthodox Christians again. Remember the firm commitment to Orthodoxy of your great predecessors. Think what a great responsibility will rest on you if in the history of Orthodoxy your name will forever be associated with trampled unity and will not be on a par with the names of your great predecessors and saints: John Chrysostom, Photius, Tarasius, Gennady, but among the traitors Churches that defiled the throne of Constantinople.

Before the common shrines of all Orthodox Christians, we, the bishops, abbots and abbesses of all the holy monasteries of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, offer our prayers to the Merciful Lord to grant you to see what your desire to unite the legitimate Church with those who have departed from it for decades has led earlier and strengthened in his hard-heartedness, he sows confusion and division among ordinary people.”