A representative of the OCU Oleksandr Drabinko has explained why he believes that the Jerusalem Patriarchate does not recognize the OCU. Drabinko is convinced that the Jerusalem Orthodox Church is “too dependent on Russia” because the Russian Orthodox Church has property in the Holy Land. He said in an interview with the Telegraf publication.

“The Jerusalem Orthodox Church is too dependent on Russia because the so-called Russian Spiritual Mission is there and at one time one third of the territories of Palestine in the Russian Empire were bought out by the Russian Spiritual Mission. There is Alexander’s Court, Sergiev’s Court, and Russia renews its legal and property claim to those objects, which are the heritage of the former Russian Empire. Well, and we should not forget that the main donor of the Patriarchate of Jerusalem has always been pilgrims, too many of whom were from Russia. Therefore, here we are not talking about the reasons for non-recognition of the OCU, but the fear of Russia to lose such a strong economic and religious partner. The Patriarch of Jerusalem simply does not want to quarrel with Moscow, but not a word has been said to condemn Kiev or Constantinople, which gave autocephaly”, – said Oleksandr Drabinko.

It should be noted that hierarchs of the Jerusalem Patriarchate quite often express their attitude to the ongoing crisis of state-church relations in Ukraine and the role of the OCU in this process. Recently we reported that Archbishop Theodosius of Sebastia (Patriarchate of Jerusalem) announced that he had joined the International Association of Human Rights Defenders and Religious Workers “Church against Xenophobia and Religious Discrimination”. The hierarch emphasized that attention should also be paid to Ukraine, where there are serious violations of human rights and of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church, headed by Metropolitan Onufry.