Bold from fear

The bishops of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church did not appear to meet with Peter Poroshenko, because they were afraid to “offend” another president?

Contrary to the information distributed by the Moscow Patriarchate, the meeting of the President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko with the bishops of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC -MP) controlled on November 13, controlled by Moscow.

As the president wanted, she took place on a neutral platform - in the “Ukrainian House” (former Museum of Lenin) on European Square (former Square of the Lenin Komsomol). But only three “canonical” hierarchs came to the meeting:

Metropolitan Vinnitsa and Barsky Simeon (Shostatsky) ,
Metropolitan Pereyaslav-Khmelnitsky and Vishnevsky Alexander (Drabinko)
And the archbishop of Novokakhovsky and the Genic Filaret (Zverev) .

The first of them is almost officially considered a candidate for the head of the Primate of the Unified Autocephalist Church of Ukraine, which is created in the country by the Patriarchate of Constantinople, the second - the main ideologist of the “canonical autocephaly” of Ukraine in the bowels of the Moscow Patriarchate, and the third - spying from the Primate of the UOC MTropolitan Onufry (Berezovsky), who did not allow the rest of the epipot Meet the president.

Petro Poroshenko attached great importance to this meeting.

She was the last chance for him to convince the Bishop of the UOC -MP of the inevitability of Ukrainian autocephaly, that is, the complete independence of the Ukrainian church after her final gap with Moscow, which will be proclaimed at the Unification Council in Kyiv presumably on November 22. And the episcopate of the UOC -MP, which is now in a very difficult position, as if he was willingly agreeing to this meeting. At the same time, the leadership of this episcopate showed a truly Jesuit trick in order to tear the meeting.

The Office of the UOC MP Metropolitan Anthony (Pakanich) managed to send for his signature the invitation to the bishops to arrive at a meeting with the president, where the meeting place indicated the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra.

Therefore, the real invitation from the presidential administration, where the Ukrainian House was indicated, found many bishops on the way.

In any case, those of them who sincerely wanted to ask Poroshenko their questions considered it necessary to first gather in the laurel and discuss the situation with their brothers. And when this happened, on the morning of November 13,

The leadership of the UOC -MP suddenly obliged the arriving bishops to stay in the laurel on the urgently assembled cathedral of bishops, in which all diocesan and vicar bishops were obliged to participate in the charter.

The time of the beginning of the cathedral almost coincided with the appointed time of the meeting with bishops, which became hostages of the situation and their own church charter. There was no such sudden cathedral in the history of the UOC -MP yet - each event of this level is preceded by preparatory work.

(The only historical parallel that comes to mind is the “Bishop Cathedral” of the ROC of 1961, when the Khrushchevsky Council for Religions forced the bishops who spent in the Trinity-Sergius Lavra on the day of Monk Sergius, to accept the new charter of the Russian Orthodox Church, which removed the clergy from the financial and economic life of the parishes. None of the bishops did not even manage to read The text of this charter ...)

Right during the cathedral of bishops, Petro Poroshenko called his chairman Metropolitan Onufry and asked why most of the bishops did not come to the meeting. The metropolitan answered in the sense that since the meeting is supposed to discuss the church issue, the meeting should be held on the “church territory”. Poroshenko did not like such an answer ...

Moreover, according to Ukrainian laws, the Kiev Pechersk Lavra is not any specifically “church territory”-it is owned by the state and is only transferred to the free lease of a religious organization on certain conditions. To imagine a refusal to meet with the president with such a motivation, say, in Russia is hardly possible. This parallel suggests itself among most Ukrainian commentators who tend to see in the act of the leadership of the UOC MP not courage, but cowardice. They decide to manifest such insolence in relation to their own president only because they are really afraid of the president of a neighboring state, which has been the main political sponsor of the structures of the Moscow Patriarchate in Ukraine for many years. Without such support and permanent blackmail “full -scale war” for the sake of “protecting the canonically Orthodox” the population of Ukraine, the UOC MP would not have a chance to maintain their leading position on the religious map of Ukraine after Constantinople of the Autocephalum of the Ukrainian Church by Constantinople.

So the “dangerous game” against its own president and the fight against the current national idea of Ukraine seems to some bishops of the UOC -MP the last chance of maintaining their position and the prepared temples and income with it.

Metropolitan Simeon (Shostatsky) is one of the main candidates for the post of head of the Autocephalous Church of Ukraine. Photo: Wikimedia

They say that Metropolitan Simeon (Shostatsky) came to a meeting with his fellow countryman - Vinnichan Peter Poroshenko - not empty -handed. According to non -affiliated data, he introduced the president of the power of attorney more than 10 bishops of the UOC MP, who gave their votes to Simeon at the Unification Council on November 22.

The fact that these data are not devoid of grounds is evidenced by the irritated reaction of the legal department of the UOC MP. Its chairman Archpriest Alexander Bakhov menacingly warned the bishops:

“Lords, be careful, because maybe you are already taking part somewhere and not even in the know! The Cathedral of Bishops of the UOC did not instruct any bishop to participate and represent the UOC on any cathedral! ”

The last addition, however, is unnecessary, because, by the decision of the Konstantol Patriarchate, the bishops will gather for the unification cathedral not as representatives of their jurisdictions, but in individual quality: each bishop will only represent himself and his flock.

President Poroshenko did not offend the bishops of the UOC MP to break the lease of the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra with them. On the contrary, he announced his readiness to meet them on any other day. But-still-on neutral territory!

Being unable to put forward his own program of actions and a set of requirements in the current church and political situation, the episcopate of the UOC-MP only gloomily repeats the formulation of the ROC Synod on the breakdown of communication with the Patriarchate of Constantinople and the rejection of autocephaly as a form of “legalization of the split”. Such a “program” can have prospects in only one case - the return of Ukraine to the protectorate of the “leader of the Russian world”, in the inevitability of which, by the way, was convinced by the Patriarch Bartholomew, his Moscow colleague Kirill (Gundyaev).

But time goes on-and Ukraine is only further moved away from the “toxic” now not only in the political, but also in the church-canonical plan of Moscow ...