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Attempt to set up unified church failed, there’s no unity in Ukraine — domestic expert

According to Bortnik, the newly established religious organization cannot be described as a full-fledged independent national church, too

KIEV, December 16. /TASS/. The attempt to create a unified church in Ukraine has failed despite Saturday’s unification council held in the capital Kiev on Saturday, Ukrainian expert Ruslan Bortnik has told TASS.

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"In fact, the Kiev Patriarchate has become legal today, together with the [unrecognized] Ukrainian Autocephalous Church and two hierarchs of the [canonical] Ukrainian Orthodox Church [reporting to the Moscow Patriarchate]. Of course, it would be wrong to say that today a unified national church was established in Ukraine, because there is no unity," said Bortnik, who heads the Ukrainian Institute for Analysis and Management of Policy.

He explained that the new church cannot be described as unified, "because it was created without the canonical church, and the participation of its two hierarchs cannot be considered as consolidation."

According to Bortnik, the newly established religious organization cannot be described as a full-fledged independent national church, too.

"According to the charter, which is likely to be approved, the church will be fully dependent from the Constantinople Patriarch from the legal, canonical and political points of view," he said.

The expert said Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople profited from the Ukrainian president’s pre-election haste and managed "to weaken the [schismatic] Kiev Patriarchate and establish control over previously unrecognized confessions."

He added that Ukraine was on the verge of a "conflict over ownership of churches and monasteries, because the new church will need symbols," and the country’s key places of religious worship are controlled mostly by the canonical church.

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 of Pereyaslav and Belaya Tserkov, who had earlier served as a bishop of the non-canonical Kiev Patriarchate, was elected its head.

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