Archbishop Sylvester, rector of the Kyiv Theological Academy and Seminary, spoke about the prerequisites for convening the Council in Feofaniya on May 27, 2022. This was reported by the Internet portal Dialogue.TUT.

The bishop noted that ecclesiastical forums of this magnitude are held infrequently. For all the years of independence, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church has convened such councils only five times. And almost each of these five councils marked certain milestones in the life of the UOC.

“The Cathedral in Feofaniya became a key event for our Church in the conditions of full-scale Russian military aggression against Ukraine. February 24, 2022 divided our life into “before” and “after”. Of course, the war had a great impact on church life. Already on the first day war, His Beatitude Metropolitan Onufry condemned the Russian military aggression and called on the Russian authorities to immediately stop hostilities. Unfortunately, this call was completely ignored,” the hierarch said.

According to Archbishop Sylvester, “today we must clearly say: during the fifteen months of the war, from the lips of the clergy of the Russian Orthodox Church (with a very small exception of a few clergymen) we have not heard condemnation of military aggression and even simple human sympathy for Ukrainians who are suffering.”

The bishop stated that from the first days of the war, a broad movement of clergy and laity began to unfold in Ukraine, who wanted to discuss the situation in which the UOC found itself. And the Council of the UOC became a definite response to this movement.

“Let me remind you that initially only a meeting of bishops, priests and laity was supposed to be held in Feofania, but in the process the event grew into a full-fledged Council of the UOC,” the rector of the Kiev Theological Academy and Seminary emphasized.