KIEV, December 13. /TASS/. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) will not change its negative attitude towards the church schism despite the Ukrainian authorities’ pressure, the UOC’s property governor, Metropolitan Antony, of Boryspol and Brovary, said on Tuesday while commenting on the sanctions imposed against UOC clerics, including himself.
Metropolitan Antony believes that the imposition of sanctions by the Ukrainian authorities was in retaliation for his activities to protect the canonical status of the UOC and oppose the church schism.
"The issue in focus is the assessment of my activities as a clergyman of the Church of Christ, for whom it is crucial to preserve its canonical structure," Metropolitan Antony said in a statement on the UOC’s Telegram channel. "Schism as a phenomenon cannot be normal for church life. The norm is the canonical foundation that preserves the unity of universal Orthodoxy," he stated, adding that there could be no compromise on such an issue.
Metropolitan Antony is determined to press for a revision of the decision on sanctions, although he is well aware of the futility of such attempts in the current conditions in Ukraine.
"I am not a lawyer, but I know that a democratic state does not impose sanctions on its citizens. Therefore, we all have the right to seek not only God's truth, but also human truth, although we understand well how ephemeral our hopes are," he concluded.
Church schism and sanctions
On December 1, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky effected the decision made by the National Security and Defense Council (NSDC) on the activities of religious organizations in Ukraine, aimed, in fact, at banning the UOC. Under the same decree, he enforced the NSDC’s sanctions against ten clerics of the UOC. On December 11, Zelensky enacted a new decision of the National Security and Defense Council on sanctions against seven more representatives of the UOC, including Metropolitan Antony.
In 2018, after a so-called unification council in Kiev, the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) was created from two schismatic religious organizations, including the so-called Kiev Patriarchate. Later, the OCU received autocephaly from Patriarch Bartholomew, of Constantinople. The Russian Orthodox Church and the UOC do not recognize the canonical status of this religious organization. They consider null and void both the tomos of autocephaly and the unification council in Kiev. After the creation of the OCU, its supporters began to seize the buildings of the canonical church by force.
Earlier, speaking in an interview with TASS, Professor Vladislav Petrushko, of the Orthodox St. Tikhon Humanitarian University, a specialist in the history of the church in Ukraine, said that the Ukrainian authorities’ aim was to merge the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church and the schismatic Orthodox Church of Ukraine into a single, completely obedient organization.