Director of the International Institute of Athos Heritage Sergei Shumylo said that after the Council of the UOC in Ukraine there will be “two Churches.” We are talking about the UOC and the OCU. He wrote about this in his post “What is the future path of the UOC: what did Metropolitan Onufry choose?” on Radio Svoboda. He also criticizes the “conservative” views of the Primate of the UOC.

“It seems that the status of the UOC will be to some extent similar to the status of the Russian Church Abroad (ROCOR),” the religious scholar writes.

Further, he claims that the dialogue of the UOC with the OCU and the Phanar “will be”, but “slowly”: “I think there will be a dialogue with the OCU and Constantinople, but slowly and not so quickly. It is important to take into account the conservative views of Metropolitan Onufry. For him, really modernist and ecumenical initiatives from both Constantinople and the Moscow Patriarchate were not very acceptable, so he allowed, for example, Bishop Longinus Zhar to criticize Patriarch Kirill and not commemorate him on charges of “heresy”.

“Metropolitan Onufry has his own convictions and visions, which are quite conservative and in some ways even close to the so-called “Old Calendarists” in Greece and ROCOR. Therefore, it must be taken into account that such conservative views will be displayed to a certain extent on the course of the UOC led by him,” writes Shumylo.

Further, he “compares” the UOC and the OCU and writes that the OCU is “liberal” and the UOC is “conservative”: “In this way, the UOC will differ from the more liberal and modernist OCU. That is, we probably now have two Churches in Ukraine, one of which will be more liberal and modernist, the other more conservative and traditionalist.”

“And a possible dialogue between them can take place, in particular, at the level of these two different worldview positions. This is important to consider. However, so far this is all an assumption,” writes Shumilo.