Monday, October 12, 2020

Orthodoxy in Ukraine

I am interested in this topic because it is so confusing.   Some 87% of Ukrainians are culturally Christian, and most of those are Orthodox Christian, of one of 4 branches.

First there was the Ukrainian Orthodox Church - Kyiv Patriarchate (UOC-KP),  which was organized in 1992 after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.  Until 2018, it was headed by Patriarch Filaret (Denysenko) and it had about 25% of Ukrainians as members.

Next is the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (UAOC) which was organized in 1990 and had Metropolitan Makariy as its head until 2018. It had about 3 million members, which is about 8% of the population of Ukraine.  

Now let's talk about the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) (UOC-MP) which is lead by Metropolitan Onuphrius, subject to oversight by the Patriarch Kirill of Moscow.  It was granted status as a self-ruling (but not autocephalous) church within the Moscow Patriarchate.  It has about 15-20% of Ukrainians as members.  It claims to be the sole canonical Orthodox body in the country and considers the other two bodies to be schismatic.

The first two bodies were merged together in 2018 to form the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU), headed by Metropolitan Epiphanius Dumenko.  It was almost simultaneously recognized by the Patriarch of Constantinople Bartholomew on December 15 2018 and then granted authocephaly on January 5 2019.  This act by Constantinople lead to a schism between Moscow and Constantinople.

There is also the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC) headed by Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, and is subject to Pope Francis.  This church has about 4 million members, about 10% of the population of Ukraine.  Their services are practically identical to the other churches, following the Byzantine Rite, except they commemorate the Pope instead of the Patriarch of Constantinople or Moscow.

So at this point it is basically a 3-way split, all of them claiming to be the true church for Ukrainians.  What a mess.

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