Cliff-on-blood

The temple in Cherkasy has passed under the control of the autocephalous Orthodox Church of Ukraine in June. But supporters of the pro -Omsk UOC opposed. How the battle for the Cathedral ended

What happened at night from October 16 to 17 around the Cathedral of Ukrainian Cherkas and whether the change in its canonical belonging of the right of believers is violating, the New -European European is versed in.

Vladimir Zelensky often says that the events of the current war are taking place not only on the military, but also on the “spiritual” front. On the night of Wednesday to Thursday, this could be observed personally in Cherkasy, where representatives of two Orthodox churches (one call the promotional, the other - patriotic) alternately stormed the Mikhailovsky Cathedral. The result is more than 15 detainees, somewhat lightly wounded and the adoption of the UOC, which until recently was part of the Moscow Patriarchate, the fact that the largest Orthodox church in Ukraine now belongs not to her, but by the autocephalous church of Ukraine ...

Of course, the media and bloggers from Russia and Ukraine directly describe what happened at night and in the morning around the cathedral and inside it. "In war as in war." Let's try to restore the picture and the background of what happened.

Two battles and departure to the catacombs

Despite the fact that the parish assembly recognized by the state on June 12 voted for the transition of the cathedral in Cherkasy from the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC), which retains the “canonical connection” with the Moscow Patriarchate, to the Autocephalous Orthodox Church of Ukraine (PCU), supported by the pro -Western Patriarch of Constantinople, the actual control of the Temple retained the clergy of the UOC. Moreover, his most radical wing in the person of the Metropolitan of Cherkasy and Kanevsky Theodosius (Snegireva), about which we will talk below. The radicals of the UOC did not recognize the legitimacy of the parish assembly and ignored the orders of the authorities on the transfer of the Church of the PC.

Theodosius, despite several criminal cases against him, continued to perform from the amvon of the cathedral with the emotional denunciations of the Ukrainian authorities and the prophecies about its imminent overthrow. At the same time, Cherkasy cannot be called a pro -Russian city (after February 24, 2022 is there such a thing in Ukraine?). And the voltage created around the cathedral supporters of “canonical ties” with Moscow should have been resolved sooner or later. And in wartime conditions, it could be resolved quite hard.

With all the unsightness of what was happening around the cathedral on the night of October 16 to 17, such a scenario of solving the problem of the largest temple of Ukraine must be recognized as relatively soft. Events developed like this.

Having received a leak that at night, during the commandant of the hour, representatives of the PCU will come to the cathedral, who then will no longer let representatives of the UOC back, Metropolitan Feodosius appointed a liturgy for this night, which gathered several dozen parishioners. They barricaded in the temple. At about three in the morning, symbolic barricades were pierced by the clergy of the PCU, led by military chaplain and local deputies and activists. They entered not only the temple, but also in the building of the diocesan administration located in the neighborhood, where Theodosius and the clergy supported him were.

Police units arrived at the scene. Since, in the conditions of commandant's hour, representatives of the UOC could not mobilize their supporters, they began to arrive at the temple only in the morning, when the main events unfolded.

The clergy and parishioners of the UOC (judging by the photo, mainly women over 50) ousted from the Cathedral of Clearics of the PCU, who were left there without power support. According to the latter, tear gas and pepper cans were used as the main tool, pre -prepared in the premises at the temple. Supporters of the UOC accuse the opponents of using traumatic weapons and theft of 60 thousand dollars allegedly stored in the disputed temple.

As a result of clashes, according to the Cherkasy channel “18000”, minor bodily injuries, including chemical burns, several people on both sides were received . The ambulance was not called to the scene.

When the reinforced contingent of the UOC was sophisticated in the temple for a second time, on the morning of October 17, Cherkassy mayor Anatoly Bondarenko published a video message to the residents of the city with an appeal to ensure the implementation of the law and the transfer of the Cathedral of the PCU. The people's deputy, the deacon of the UOC and the master of sports in powerlifting Artem Dmitruk, who fled from Ukraine, for his part, distributed the treatment of the PCU and the Ukrainian authorities of using weapons (?!) Against peaceful believers.

Proponents of the PCU, reinforced by war veterans and activists of public organizations, re -broke through the cordon of supporters of the UOC and finally occupied the cathedral by 11 in the morning. An hour later, the first prayer in Ukrainian began in the history of the temple in Ukrainian.

Leaving the cathedral, Theodosius called on his supporters to go underground, to create a catacomb church (by the way, in persecution of the real catacomb church that appeared in the USSR in 1920, the “maternal church” of Theodosius - the Moscow Patriarchate - took an active part). According to unverified data, he was hospitalized, while the police intend to present the Metropolitan suspicion under Art. 269 ​​of the Criminal Code of Ukraine (hooliganism). In the same case, 16 activists of the UOC, mainly clergy and monks, have already been detained in Cherkasy. The maximum punishment under this article is five years in prison.

The influential Sophia Brotherhood , uniting the intellectual elite of PCU and the UOC, condemned the "power confrontation in the house of God." At the same time, the brotherhood made it clear what he considers the true culprit of the “church manipulator” of Theodosius, who “openly spreads the teachings of the“ Russian world ”.

The two churches had something to fight for. The Holy Mikhailovsky Cathedral of Cherkassy was officially recognized as the largest in Ukraine and the fourth largest by the Orthodox Church of the world. Its height is 74 meters, and the area of ​​the main prayer space is more than 3100 square meters. meters. The cathedral can accommodate about 12 thousand people, and possession of it has an important symbolic meaning in disputes for leadership in Ukrainian Orthodoxy. The giant building was erected in the second half of the 1990s on the initiative of the bright patriot of Ukraine and a supporter of autocephaly of the UOC, Metropolitan Sofroniy (Dmitruk, died in 2020). At the end of the “damned 90s,” Sofroniy began to build an equally grandiose diocesan administration next to the cathedral, but it was no longer possible to raise funds, the monolithic concrete colossus turned into a long-building and still damages the appearance of the central park of the city, which stands the cathedral.

According to Military Capellane PEC Fr. Vladimir Ridny , after the formal transition of the cathedral to his church, he became a garrison temple. The former diocesan administration of the UOCs will accommodate centers of national-patriotic education and training of the chaplains. By the way, the manager of the Cherkasy diocese of PCU Metropolitan Ioann (Yaremenko) is the head of the Synodal Directorate of the Military clergy of his Church, that is, the main military chaplain of Ukraine. According to its laws, Orthodox chaplains can only represent PCU; The clergy of the church, which preserves the “canonical connection” with Moscow, are not allowed to service in the Armed Forces (more precisely, to the chaplain service, but they can be mobilized as ordinary military personnel).

Experiment on the diocese

The history of the Cherkasy diocese of the UOC in recent years is quite dramatic. It was in it that an attempt was made to a radical change in ideology, and towards the opposite of the one that most Ukrainian society chose in the conditions of military aggression.

According to the Diocese of the UOC itself, today it unites 411 parishes (for comparison - about 330 parishes are included in the Cherkasy diocese of PCU). But at the same time, in the staff of the Cherkasy diocese of the UOC there are only 224 cleric.

Such a ratio, as the New Evrop "at the Institute of Philosophy of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, indicates a large number of" paper "parishes-have the status of a legal entity, but who do not have buildings and do not perform worship.

The UOC was fond of the creation of the “paper” parishes during the presidency of Yanukovych and Poroshenko, considering this as one of the instruments of combating autocephaly, that is, with the separation of the Ukrainian church from Moscow. According to this logic, the leading position of the UOC in the religious statistics of Ukraine convinced the authorities and the international community that most Orthodox Ukraine did not want to break away from the Moscow Patriarchate and the promotion of the autocephalous agenda must be stopped.

In fact, over the long months of the war, supporters of unity with the Moscow Patriarchate have turned into a marginal community, although noisy. Today they do not make up the majority even in the UOC itself, where they are concentrated around several “iconic” hierarchs (all of them have problems with the SBU): Metropolitans of the Vyshgorod Paul, Zaporizhzhya Luke, Cherkasy Theodosius and Banchenky Longin. The Primate of the UOC Metropolitan of Kiev and All Ukraine Onufry (Berezovsky) occupies a more balanced position: officially condemns the actions of the Kremlin and unofficially goes to negotiations with the Patriarchate of Constantinople.

In February last year, Metropolitan Theodosius received his first suspicion of the SBU - under the article “Denial or justification of armed aggression against Ukraine”, in April, suspicions of inciting inter -religious enmity were added to it. Finally, the other day he received another criminal case - for violating the conditions of house arrest. Nominally, being arrested, Theodosius to the Assumption of this year, on August 28, said a sermon from the Amvon of the Cathedral, putting forward against the head of the civil service of Ukraine Viktor Elena's prosecution for his demand to “violate the law of the Church, become schismatics”. Theodosius called for “keeping prayer unity” with Moscow and “act exactly the opposite of how it requires” the Ukrainian state. Of course, Victor Elensky considered such accusations slanderous. Ukraine as a rule of law cannot intervene in the canonical practice of religious organizations, he noted , it only states the complicity of the Moscow Patriarchate in aggression, which is also recognized at the level of international institutions of the PACE level.

Much explains the Russian cultural and religious identity of Theodosius, who recently turned 50 years old. According to the patronage of his older brother, Archpriest Rostislav Snegirev, who first served in the Nizhny Novgorod diocese, and then switched to leading work in the Kaluga diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church, 19-year-old Denis Snegirev entered the Kaluga Theological School, soon transformed into a seminary. He served as a hypodiacon of Metropolitan of Kaluga and Borovsky Clement (Kapalina) - the then deputy chairman of the department of external church relations of the Moscow Patriarchate, and later - an official candidate for the patriarchs at the 2009 local cathedral (in Soviet times, the Topaz KGB agent, worked in the United States). He was ordained in the hieromonk, became a treasurer, editor, and then the dean of the Paphnutiev-Borovsky monastery. Later, Denis, who became monasticism Feodosius, studied at the Moscow Theological Academy and headed the Chancellery of the Kaluga diocese, received awards from Patriarch Alexy II (in Soviet times - agent of the KGB Drozdov). Not without the knowledge of the latter in 2001, he was routed to Ukraine, where he made a rapid career in the UOCs of the then Moscow Patriarchate. He became hegumen, then Archimandrite, headed the Ukrainian branch of the Slavic Youth Union, which promoted the imperial narratives of Rus Tredina. Since 2010, Theodosius is the bishop: first the Vicar of the Kyiv diocese, and since 2020 - the manager of the Cherkasy diocese. In 2021, he was erected to the rank of Metropolitan.

The elder brother of Metropolitan Rostislav, having received some secret knowledge, on February 21, 2022, hurriedly left Ukraine through Istanbul and, using his vast relationships, received a parish in the American city of Miluoka, where he serves quietly, without speaking in Ukraine in Ukraine. The Ukrainian media believe that both Brothers Snegirev during their many years and vivid ministry in the Russian Federation received Russian citizenship and is unlikely to refuse it.

The predecessor of Feodosia at the Cherkasy department was a hierarch with directly opposite views - an informal leader of the “nationalist” wing in the episcopate of the UOC -MP, a native of Volyn (born in 1940) Metropolitan Sophronius (Dmitruk). Even in the era of the patriarchate of Alexy II and the presidency of Leonid Kuchma, he distributed an interview in which he perplexed: “Why can the largest in the number of believers Orthodox Church of the world <Ukrainian” cannot manage without anyone? ” Sofroniy actively supported both Maidans, and at the end of 2018, when the Patriarchate and Petro Poroshenko, the Constantinople and Petro Poroshenko, prepared the unification council of three branches of Ukrainian Orthodoxy, made it clear that he was ready to support this initiative: “I do not remember the patriarch ... In an independent state, there should be an independent church.” However, being a man of advanced age, he still decided not to change anything in his life, and remaining in the UOC -MP.

The rights of believers and their boundaries

The Holy Mikhailov Cathedral in Cherkasy was, albeit the largest, but not the first and not the last in the list of temples to transferred from the UOC to the PCU under the influence of Russian “politics” against Ukraine. The Ukrainian Wikipedia has a separate article on the process of transition of temples. Almost 1800 cases of such a change in church jurisdiction during the time of "Swarm" have already been recorded there. As a source in the UOC told the Novo-Europe, the leadership of this Church really fears that the “structure is sprinkled”, therefore it puts forward the only condition for his negotiations with the Patriarchate of Constantinople and the PCU suspension of the transition of temples, which is called the “capture process” in the UOC.

Observers note that the dynamics of the process depends on the degree of advisability of Metropolitan Onufry and his environment, which behaves contradictory.

As the New European Europe wrote , at the end of August the law “On the Protection of the Constitutional Organization in the field of activities of religious organizations” was adopted in Ukraine, which caused a counterattack reaction in the international human rights community. This law, in particular, gives religious organizations of the country nine months to finally break off relations with canonical centers in the aggressor state. Passing on the law on October 16, the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine approved the procedure for checking religious organizations for communication with such centers, developed by the department of Viktor Elensky. In relation to the UOC, such an audit was already carried out in the summer of last year on the order of the State Civil Service of Ukraine for Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Conscience.

Despite the cosmetic changes in the UOC charter at its cathedral at the end of May 2022, the audit found that the basis - a link to Tomos Patriarch Alexy II and its synod, determining the conditions for subordination of the UOC to the Moscow Patriarchate - remained in the charter. So, the canon center of the UOC is still in Moscow. In addition, representatives of the UOC did not officially come out of the structures of the Moscow Patriarchate (only suspended their work in them), did not send notifications to other local churches about their withdrawal from the Russian Orthodox Church and did not impose canonical punishments on clerk-collaborators. And by the way, only among the bishops of the UOC since the beginning of 2022 about ten people fled to Russia, and the brightest of them - Metropolitan Jonathan (Yelets) - was exchanged this summer in the status of ... a prisoner of war !

Of course, fights against the background of temples are ugly, and the rights of any believers should be respected. But the boundary of this respect takes place where the word “believer” loses its actual religious meaning, and the subject of faith becomes purely earthly, political ideology. Moreover, such, under the banner of which entire cities are destroyed in the XXI century, hundreds of thousands of people are dying, a whole nation is sacrificed to Moloch. The preaching of this kind of “beliefs” should not be respected under the guise of “rights of believers”, she is pure evil.