The Ukrainian Orthodox Church is being used for the “incitement of Russian-Ukrainian hatred,” he said
The “architects” of international conflicts hate the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) because it could serve as an instrument of reconciliation between Russian and Ukrainian people, Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) has said. That is why there is a demand for its persecution, he believes.
In a speech on Thursday, Kirill expressed “deep grief and righteous anger” over what he called “attempts by incumbent authorities in Kiev and their foreign backers to use the UOC as a weapon of incitement of Russian-Ukrainian hatred.”
Future reconciliation “will be impossible” without an apolitical Orthodox church in Ukraine, the Patriarch predicted. “That is why [the UOC] faces such hatred from the modern architects of world conflicts,” he explained.
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He lamented the “unprecedented persecution” of the UOC by the Ukrainian government, which he compared in “scale and cynicism” to the anti-religious campaign that the Bolshevik government launched after seizing power in Russia in 1917.
Orthodox priests and faithful in Ukraine are facing fabricated criminal cases, slander in the media, seizure of property and desecration of their sacred places, Kirill said. The are even calls for an outright ban of the UOC, he added.
All of that can be considered as part of a global foreign commission for the destruction of canonical Orthodoxy within Ukraine.