MOSCOW, December 16. /TASS/. Ukraine’s President Pyotr Poroshenko, who has declared the establishment of a new Autocephalous Orthodox Church in the country, is cynically abusing religious feelings of the believers in the interests of his election campaign in a bid to retain the power, a Russian lawmaker said on Sunday.
"The most appalling thing is that the current Ukrainian authorities are cynically abusing the feelings of the believers. Poroshenko has already demonstrate the entire world that in his election agony, in his frantic efforts to retain his eluding power he is ready to venture any provocations or mean tricks. But now he has gone even further: being a man who is far from the church he has dared to declare autocephaly of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. I won’t be surprised that given his dictator’s ambitions he could proclaim himself a vicar of God in Ukraine," Leonid Slutsky, chairman of the international committee of the Russian State Duma lower parliament house, wrote on his Telegram account.
He did not rule out persecution of and the use of force against the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine. "Centuries past, we are actually back in 1054 to see the Christian Church schism as the Moscow and the Ecumenical Patriarchates have ceased full communion," he added.
According to the lawmaker, Kiev’s Western patrons are behind the current split in the church world. "We understand that it was initiated from the West. We understand that this is an attempt to widen the gap between Russia and Ukraine, to drive a wedge between the two biggest local churches, to break the unity of the Orthodox world and instigate a war between those who used to be tasked to maintain the values of the Russian world. But it will not be an end of the Orthodox civilization Western managers of this appalling autocephaly project are after. We will survive," he stressed.
On Saturday, the St. Sophia’s Cathedral in Kiev hosted a so-called ‘unification’ council held under the auspices of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople and brokered by the Ukrainian authorities. After the council, Pyotr Poroshenko, the president of secular Ukraine who had attended the schismatic assembly, declared the establishment of a new church. Metropolitan Epiphany (Dumenko) of Pereyaslav and Belaya Tserkov, who had earlier served as a bishop of the non-canonical Kiev Patriarchate, was elected its head.
The Ukrainian canonical Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate turned down Constantinople’s invitation to take part in the council and declared both the council and the structure it has created illegitimate. Only two from 90 archbishops of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church attended the assembly. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church said later that local churches will be notified that these two hierarchs are no longer on the list of canonical bishops.