Ukrainian Orthodox Church Facing the Challenge of War (February – early June 2022)

Abstract

The article is dedicated to the processes in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) during the first three months of the escalation of the Russian-Ukrainian war. The author reconstructs the key events of church life over the course of February-May 2022 and shows that the Primate of the UOC  consistently took a patriotic position, condemning Russian aggression from the first day of the escalation. The Church launched a wide range of humanitarian activities aimed at helping refugees and internally displaced persons and regularly provided assistance to the Armed Forces of Ukraine. To the contrary, the Moscow Patriarch Kirill unequivocally sided with the aggressor, which caused mass indignation among the parish clergy of the UOC and led to a movement calling against commemorating Patriarch Kirill during the service, which eventually developed into calls for the complete separation of the UOC from the Moscow Patriarchate. Consequentially, the most determined part of the clergy (more than 430 people) appealed to the heads of all the autocephalous Churches of the world with a call to bring Patriarch Kirill to the church court. The beginning of the war also caused a noticeable aggravation of state-church relations. Local authorities began to make decisions on banning the activity of UOC communities. An assembly of bishops, clergy, and laity was called by the Holy Synod of the UOC on May 27 in Kyiv, which grew into the UOC Council, which made fundamental changes to the UOC Statute and severed the connection of the UOC with the Moscow Patriarchate. While this constitutes a serious breakthrough for the UOC,, the author concludes that the status of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church can only be fully resolved only after the end of the war.