Jonathan or disappeared

Moscow and Vatican achieved the "liberation" of the pro -Omsk metropolitan of the Ukrainian Church, who declared himself prisoners of war. Who is Fr. Jonathan?

One of the leaders of the pro -Moscow group in the episcopate of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC; until May 2022 was part of the Moscow Patriarchate), Metropolitan Ionafan (Yelets) agreed to participate in the exchange of prisoners of war and, having left his Tulchinsky diocese (Vinnitsa region), arrived in Moscow. On June 25, in his residence in the Danilov monastery, he was solemnly accepted by Patriarch Kirill, with whom in the Soviet years Jonathan worked in the Leningrad Theological Seminary. Two days earlier, the Jonathanum was brought to the Ukrainian-Belarusian border, where on behalf of the Moscow Patriarchate it was met by the assistant Patriarch for international affairs, Archpriest Nikolai Balashov.

On June 18, the verdict of the Ukrainian court entered into force, according to which Jonathan was supposed to spend 5 years in places of imprisonment for the justification of Russian aggression and related crimes. According to the Patriarchate, the Patriarch personally pulled out “from the Ukrainian captivity” of Ionafan, but the sources of Novo-Europe, close to the Vatican, say that Pope Francis played a key role here. Why is Metropolitan Jonathan so important to Moscow, can he really be considered prisoner of war and who played a key role in his flight from Ukraine?

Milestones of a big way

The SBU drew attention to the activities of Jonathan in March 2022: on his personal website (now closed), the service staff discovered "calls for inciting interfessional conflicts, supporting armed aggression against Ukraine and temporary occupation of part of its territory." Moreover, the SBU claimed that the Metropolitan “selects pro -Russian persons from among residents of the Vinnitsa region to assist the penetration of units of the RF Armed Forces into the region”. Does it fit badly with the image of a 70-year-old lord? Yes, if you do not know some details of his biography.

Jonathan was born in 1949 in the Voronezh region, studied at the Leningrad Theological Seminary and the Academy, was tonsured in monasticism by Metropolitan Nicodemus (Rotov) and ordained the sacred rank by Archbishop Kirill (Gundyaev), taught church singing and wrote several choral works. As the Greek-Catholic priest Mikhail Gavrilov, who studied at the Leningrad Theological Schools along with Jonathan, recalls , the entire closest environment of Nicodemus (KGB agent "Svyatoslav") was recruited by state security organs. Nicodemus considered the work on the KGB a prerequisite for the survival of the Church in Soviet conditions and willingly blessed students of spiritual schools for recruitment. It was on the initiative of the KGB in early 1987 that Jonathan, who had nothing to do with Ukraine, was sent to Kyiv, where he quickly makes a church career: becomes the first governor of the newly open Kiev Pechersk Lavra, Bishop Pereyaslav-Khmelnitsky and the manager of the Ukrainian exarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church. As a legend of cover, a rumor was launched that the ionafan was deprived of the Leningrad registration due to the distribution of the book “The Gulag Archipelago”, but even then this version sounded unconvincing.

After Ukraine restored its independence, and the then Exarch of Ukraine, Metropolitan Filaret (Denisenko), convened the Cathedral of the bishops, who turned to the Moscow Patriarchate with a request for autocephaly (complete independence) of the UOC, Jonathan launched the Filaret discredit campaign.

According to the idea of ​​Moscow curators, in this way it was possible to torpedo the process of separating the Ukrainian church from the Moscow Patriarchate.

Having consulted with Metropolitan Kirill, who at that time the department of external church relations of the Moscow Patriarchate, Jonathan sent a report to the Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church in June 1991 with the presentation of “compromising” to Metropolitan Filaret (officially being a monk, allegedly has a wife and three children with whom he lives together, and the wife actually leads the exarchate and humiliates clergymen and humiliates clergymen and humiliates clergymen and humiliates clergymen and humiliates clergymen T. P.). Jonafan handed over the relevant materials to the journalist "Light" to Alexander Tnzhny, who, on their basis, wrote a scandalous investigation "his bliss without Mitra and the rod." Three months later, the Synod of the UOC deprived Jonathan San for slander to the Primate, he moved to the "schismatic" Ukrainian autocephalous church, but already in 1992 returned back. It is noteworthy that at the Bishop Cathedral in Moscow in March 1992, Metropolitan Filaret spoke of a number of homosexual scandals associated with Jonathan, which, according to canons, made it impossible to accept from him any accusations against other bishops. When Filaret was ousted from the Moscow Patriarchate, and the new head of the UOC MP became more tolerant of homosexuals by Metropolitan Vladimir (Sabodan), the bishop’s sana (such a procedure is not provided for canons), making it a permanent member of the synod and appointing it to prestigious departments (Sumskaya, Kherson). Since 2006, Jonathan headed the Tulchinsky diocese in the Vinnitsa region, was erected to the rank of archbishop, and then the Metropolitan.

Guilty of four articles

Jonathan was a frequent guest in Moscow and did not particularly hide his views. After the events of 2014, he wrote “Anthem-Molitov for Russia”, in which there are such words: “And the spirit of courage on the day of the battle in the heart is Russian inhale ... O Great Russia, Father's House, my country.” Jonafan received his Ukrainian citizenship illegally, retaining the citizenship of the Russian Federation, which at the end of 2022 became the basis for the suspension of his Ukrainian citizenship. During a search in the Tulchinsky diocese of the UOC, the SBU employees seized the following materials : leaflets of the “authorities of Russia” (12 copies); “On the accession of the Republic of Crimea to the Russian Federation” (11 copies); “Donbass - Russia” (8 copies); Decree of Patriarch Kirill dated October 6, 2022 demanding purely pray for Vladimir Putin (5 copies). The official position of the Moscow Patriarchate, set out in a letter from the Patriarch of August 9, 2023, is that all these materials were thrown by the ionafan. The Metropolitan himself partially pleaded guilty in court, while denying that he was the author of the “anthem-polit for Russia”. In his smartphone, instructions were found to establish an encrypted connection with subscribers in the Russian Federation, and the Metropolitan refused to call the court and the investigation the source of this instruction.

On August 7, Vinnitsa City Court (first instance) was recognized by Anatoly Ivanovich Yeletsky (worldly name of Jonathan) guilty of committing crimes under Part 2 of Art. 109 ("Calls to the forcial change in the constitutional system"), part 1 of Art. 110 (“Calls to change the state border of Ukraine”), part 2 of Art. 161 (“Violation of the rights of citizens depending on their religious beliefs”), part 3 of Art. 436-2 (“Execution of armed aggression of the Russian Federation”) of the Criminal Code of Ukraine. Sentence: 5 years in prison with confiscation of property. During the appeal of the verdict, the Metropolitan remained under night arrest, but on August 9, the Ukrainian authorities submitted official consent to his Russian prisoner of war transfer.

The consideration of the appellate application for the verdict of the Vinnitsa court was delayed: only in early April of this year did the prosecutor's office ask Jonathan out of arrest in order to issue it to the Russian Federation. Then the metropolitan did not mind, but in mid -June, when a few days remained before the exchange, he suddenly stated that he no longer considered himself prisoner of war. The lawyer of Jonathan Igor Chudovsky assured that his client "wants to continue to work for the benefit of Ukraine." However, the court left this petition without consideration, and on June 18, the appeal approved the verdict of the court of first instance, and Jonathan was supposed to go to bars. But already on June 19, the Vinnitsa city court at a closed meeting made a decision that “cannot be subject to publication”, on the exchange of Jonathanum for Ukrainian prisoners of war. The press service of the Vinnitsa Regional Prosecutor's Office said in this regard that on April 11, Jonathan appealed to the Coordinating Headquarters on issues of prisoners of war with a statement of his exchange and was officially included in the Ukrainian exchange list. In connection with the exchange of the metropolitan, he was exempted from criminal liability, nevertheless, his lawyer prepares a complaint about the verdict in the Supreme Court of Ukraine. Since the Synod of the UOC did not free the Jonathan from the administration of the Tulchinsky diocese, its departure to the Russian Federation should be interpreted as an unauthorized abandonment of the department, which, according to church canons, entails the deprivation of the dignity.

Suddenly, the exchange of Jonathaan caused the protest of the famous Canadian lawyer Robert Amsterdam, the head of the international company Amsterdam & Partners LLP, which at one time represented the interests of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, and now protecting the UOC in international courts. He called the exchange of the hierarch as a prisoner of war “war crime”, promising to submit an appropriate statement against Ukraine to the International Criminal Court.

"UOC in exile"

In May 2022, when the Council of the UOC in the Kiev Monastery Feofania announced the complete independence of this church from the Moscow Patriarchate, Metropolitan Jonathan defiantly continued the commemoration of Patriarch Kirill as his Primate and even sent the priests of his diocese instructions on how to remember the patriarch to not notice the patriotic parishioners. In October 2022, the ROC Synod appointed Jonathan a member of one of the patriarchal commissions, he also retained his place in the Patriarchal Council for Culture. In August 2009, the then President of the Russian Federation Medvedev awarded Jonathan the Order of Friendship, with whom the hierarch flaunts in all his official pictures.

Moscow cherished with such a valuable agent. After the sentence of the court of first instance, on August 9, 2023, Patriarch Kirill officially turned to religious and public leaders calling for helping the return of Jonathan to his homeland. Among the addressees of the message in the first place is the name of the Pope Francis. All accusations against Jonathan, even recognized by himself, Cyril called then “absolutely insignificant”, and evidence “falsified”. “The Grace of Jonathan, like the whole church, prays for the world, calls for the spiritual unity of Holy Russia,” wrote the Patriarch, who, a year earlier, canceled in the temples of the Russian Orthodox Church a prayer for peace in Ukraine, replacing it with a prayer for the victory of the Russian Federation.

During a meeting with the Jonathan in the Danilov Monastery on June 25, Cyril emphasized his status of a prisoner of war, from which the Metropolitan seemed to try to disown : “It is immediately clear that staying in captivity - not only spiritual, but also physical - leaves his mark on a person ... For his fidelity to the Patriarch, the Russian Orthodox Church, to compromise, bordering on betrayal, bordering on betrayal, borders. Vladyka underwent sorrow. " In response, Jonathan very peculiarly confessed his faith: “The Patriarch is a symbol of the entire Russian Church. Not to shame your name was my task, and this gave me strength in resistance to evil. ” Such an exchange of replicas caused among the leadership and believers of the UOC to anxious expectations of the fact that, firstly, the propaganda activities of Jonathane in Moscow will harm the Ukrainian church, causing new accusations against its hierarchy, and secondly, Moscow will try to make Jonafan the leader of the Ukrainian Church in exile, since it became the most significant of the five hierarchs who fled from Ukraine in the Russian Federation after February 2022

Despite the self -proclamation of the UOC -complete independence, the Moscow Patriarchate is not ready to “release” its Ukrainian structure, considering it an important “hybrid” tool in the conflict of the Russian Federation with Ukraine.

Moreover, without the Ukrainian delegates of the Russian Orthodox Church, the Bishop or Local Council cannot conduct, and the charter of the Russian Orthodox Church is imperative to conduct the Cathedral at least once every four years (the last bishop's cathedral took place in 2017, and the church administration, in particular the Higher Church Court formed, lost their legitimacy in 2021). On the other hand, the departure to Russia of the most odious pro -sample hierarchs of the UOC will clear the way to unite this church with the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (PCU) and to its recognition to world Orthodoxy.

Francis is gaining momentum

Official Russian media do not quite share the version of the Patriarchate that Jonathan “rescued from captivity” Patriarch Kirill personally. According to another version, Pope Francis played a key role in this exchange, who discussed the fate of Jonathan and other hierarchs pursued by the Ukrainian authorities at a meeting with Vladimir Zelensky on June 14. According to the results of the meeting, the President of Ukraine praised the efforts of the pope to return the citizens illegally exported from Ukraine, primarily children. Today, dad is directly involved in the metabolic processes between Ukraine and the Russian Federation, but also in search of ways to liberate Russian political prisoners. The head of the World Union of Old Believers, Leonid Sevastyanov, supporting constant contact with Francis, expresses the hope that the success of these pope’s efforts will make him a worthy candidate to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. In early May, dad held a meeting with Nobel laureates in the Vatican, during which Dmitry Muratov drew the attention of the pontiff to the problem of Russian political prisoners.

Leonid Sevastyanov recalls the unique role of the Holy See during various military conflicts of recent times: for example, Pope John Pavel II and Benedict XVI condemned the wars in Iraq and Libya, while acting between the former leaders of these countries and Western politicians. The Institute of the Papacy is the only direct heir to the Roman Empire in the modern world, that Pax Romana that lies at the origins of all Western civilization (however, Byzantine and Russian, as they called themselves second and third Rome). “In the conditions when the fiasco was suffered by international institutions created according to the results of World War II,” said Sevastyanov, “only the Holy Rome can become the capital of the new United Nations, the eternal city, where the eternal world is concluded.”

Who is in line for the exchange?

A year ago, the head of the SBU, Vasily Malyuk, reported 61 criminal cases instituted by the service against clergymen of the UOC. Obviously, today there are even more such things. Jonathan became the first hierarch transferred as part of the exchange, earlier Russia was transferred only to priests - Nikolai Zirka from the Gorlovskaya diocese and Andrei Pavlenko from Lisichansk. The latter in the Russian Federation is considered a particularly valuable employee - 28 prisoners of war were returned to Ukraine for him alone.

In the "Register of Traitors", which leads the Ukrainian public movement "Chesno", 41 religious figures, including 40 representatives of the UOC. All of them are accused under the same articles of the Criminal Code of Ukraine - the justification of armed aggression and inciting interfaith enmity. Now in Kiev there is a lawsuit over the Zaporizhzhya Metropolitan of the UOC Luke (Kovalenko), very unrestrained in the language. After 2014, he systematically made sermons containing criticism of the very idea of ​​Ukrainian statehood and calls to “rally around Patriarch Kirill” (agent of the KGB “Mikhailov”). In the pre -trial detention center, the Svyatogorsk Metropolitan Arseny is placed, who directly from the church amvon on the air of YouTube called the exact coordinates of the location of military units of the Armed Forces in the vicinity of Svyatogorsk (Donetsk region). Under house arrest are two more influential Metropolitans of the UOC-the governor of the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra Pavel (Lybid) (under the round-the-clock) and the control of the Cherkasy diocese Theodosius (under the night).

The process of transition of communities from the UOC to the patriotic PCU continues, which received autocephaly in 2019 from the Patriarchate of Constantinople. In the first months of the “Svo” with the “Moscow Church” (as it is called in the colloquial), more than 700 parishes, and today their number reaches one and a half thousand. Quantitatively, the UOC still leads in the religious statistics of Ukraine, but its position is noticeably weaken.

The issue of the legal status of the hierarchs pursued in Ukraine and the clergy of the UOC, of ​​course, is controversial. Some of those who directly collaborated with the competent authorities of the Russian Federation may be equal to prisoners of war. With "just sympathetic" everything is not so unambiguous. In any case, the exchange process of this kind is beneficial to both parties: the clergy, in love with Putin's Russia, get the opportunity to enjoy life in the country of their dreams, and the UOC, cleansed of such a contingent, gets a chance to return to the bosom of world Orthodoxy.