The Orthodox Church is very strict about the sin of schism. Saint Ignatius of Antioch wrote, “If any man follows him that makes a schism in the Church, he shall not inherit the Kingdom of God.” Likewise, Saint John Chrysostom wrote, “The sin of schism is not washed away even by the blood of martyrdom.” In this context, a recent event in Africa is of particular significance. While it may not attract the attention of secular people, it holds particular significance for devout Christians.

From Kiev to Nairobi: An unholy export

By letting Ukrainian schismatics serve Liturgy in Kenya, Alexandria forced its African flock into a grave canonical violation

By Priest George Maximov

At the end of July, a delegation from the schismatic Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) made an official visit to the Metropolis of Nairobi of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Alexandria. With the ‘blessing’ of so-called ‘Metropolitan’ Epiphanius Dumenko, ‘Metropolitan’ Eustratiy Zoria and ‘Archpriest’ Vitaly Danchak arrived in Kenya.

On July 25, they were received at the residence of Archbishop Makarios (Tillyrides) of Nairobi, to whom the guests presented a bishop’s panagia, among other gifts. On July 26, with the blessing of the archbishop, the schismatics from the OCU celebrated the Divine Liturgy in the Orthodox Patriarchal Cathedral of Sts. Cosmas and Damian. Eustratiy Zoria presided over the Liturgy, assisted by the local African clergy.

This confirms that the creation of the Patriarchal Exarchate of Africa of the Russian Orthodox Church was a timely decision. The Patriarchal Exarchate of Africa was created after Patriarch Theodore of Alexandria, contrary to his previous position and without any explanation, recognized the OCU in 2019. The Patriarchal Exarchate of Africa was initially established for those priests, religious, and laity of the Church of Alexandria who wished to avoid contact with the schismatics.

The fact that the Ukrainian groups from which the OCU was formed are schismatics is not the “private opinion of solely the Russian Orthodox Church”; it was the common position of absolutely all regional Orthodox Churches from the 1990s to 2018, and was confirmed by official church documents.

The defrocking and excommunication of the self-proclaimed ‘Patriarch of Ukraine’ Filaret Denisenko was also recognized by all the regional Orthodox Churches without exception, including the patriarchates of Constantinople and Alexandria. Moreover, Patriarch Theodore of Alexandria once said in an interview that when he served as archimandrite at the Representation of the Orthodox Church of Alexandria in Odessa, Ukraine, and learned that Ukrainian schismatics wanted to come into the church, he stood at the door and barred them from entering. He also boasted of this when he became patriarch, citing it as an example of his principled stance on schism.

In 2018, Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople announced that he would recognize two Ukrainian schismatic groups, the largest of which was Filaret Denisenko’s group, and signed the tomos of autocephaly. This was presented as a kind of benefaction bestowed by the Patriarch of Constantinople on Orthodox Ukrainians.

The particularly cynical nature of the situation lay in the fact that at the time, in 2018, the majority of Orthodox believers in Ukraine belonged to the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC), which was not schismatic. And the UOC did not request Patriarch Bartholomew to sign the tomos.

The schismatics were a minority that systematically attacked the canonical UOC – carrying out physical assaults, forcibly seizing churches, and beating priests and laity. They committed obvious evil, inflicting suffering not on some people in Russia, but on Orthodox Ukrainians who were part of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

After Constantinople recognized the OCU, its adherents did not cease behaving like schismatics; they even intensified their attacks, beatings, and seizure of churches from the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Patriarch Bartholomew’s lawless act legitimized this evil, which continues to this day. This meant that this was not only a canonical crime, but also an immoral act that only intensified the suffering of Orthodox Ukrainians.

The overwhelming majority of the regional Orthodox Churches did not support Patriarch Bartholomew’s decision. Only the patriarchates of Constantinople and Alexandria fully recognized the schismatics as the true ‘Orthodox Church of Ukraine’. The Churches of Greece and Cyprus recognized the OCU partially (some bishops of these Churches did not recognize it). The remaining ten regional Orthodox Churches, including the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem, have not officially recognized the OCU in the past nine years. So this is not a “Greek-Russian dispute,” as some falsely claim; and the question is not, “Do you side with the Russians or the Greeks?” but “Do you side with the schismatics or with the Church?”

When the Patriarchal Exarchate of Africa was established in December 2021, many Orthodox Africans who were unwilling to be defiled by spiritual communion with the schismatics defected from the Patriarchate of Alexandria. Skeptics wondered whether this was justified: after all, Ukraine is far from Africa, and the schism and other tragic events happened on another continent and didn’t really affect ordinary Orthodox Africans.

However, the events in Kenya at the end of July have once again confirmed that those who left the Patriarchate of Alexandria had valid reasons to do so. The threat is real – and now, it has gone a step further: the Greeks allowed the schismatics to celebrate the Divine Liturgy alongside Orthodox Africans. Patriarch Theodore of Alexandria, who once barred Ukrainian schismatics from entering his church in Ukraine, has now allowed them to celebrate the Divine Liturgy in Africa. Self-proclaimed ‘Metropolitan’ Eustratiy Zoria, who was ‘ordained’ by the excommunicated Philaret Denisenko (and therefore, for most of the Orthodox world is simply a layman) was allowed to celebrate the Liturgy as a bishop, and Kenyan clergy served him.

Canon 33 of the Council of Laodicea states, “No one shall join in prayers with heretics or schismatics”; Canon 10 of the Apostolic Canon says, “If any one shall pray, even in a private house, with an excommunicated person, let him also be excommunicated”; And Canon 2 of the Council of Antioch states, “It is unlawful to commune with excommunicated persons, to assemble at private homes and pray with those who do not pray in the church, or to welcome those who do not assemble with another church. In addition, if any of the bishops, priests, deacons, or anyone in the canon are found communing with excommunicated persons, let them also be excommunicated because they bring confusion to the order of the Church.”

The OCU is not in communion with the majority of the Orthodox Churches. It appears that the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Alexandria has forced Orthodox Africans to commit a canonical violation of the 

Notably, Greek Metropolitan Makarios himself refused to concelebrate the Liturgy with the schismatics. He knows full well what they are and the shame of celebrating the Liturgy with them. That day, Metropolitan Makarios celebrated the Liturgy in another church and sent the unsuspecting Africans, his spiritual children who remained in his diocese, to commit this canonical crime.

This is precisely what those Orthodox Kenyans and other Africans who joined the Patriarchal Exarchate of Africa of the Russian Orthodox Church shielded themselves from. By preserving their souls from communion with the schismatics, they preserved the purity of their Orthodox faith.

https://www.rt.com/africa/644395-ukrainian-schismatics-in-kenya/

=======================

Ukrainian parliament passes law banning Ukrainian Orthodox Church

BY Jason Melanovski

23 August 2024

Ukraine’s parliament moved forward on Tuesday with long-standing plans to ban the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC). A lopsided 265 votes to 29 were cast in favor of a bill that will shut down religious groups supposedly linked to Moscow.  

President Volodymyr Zelensky is expected to quickly sign the bill into law. In language commonly used by the fascist right, he praised the vote as a means to  strengthen the “spiritual independence” of the country.

Under the law, each individual Orthodox parish accused of ties to Moscow will be given nine months to leave the UOC and join another Orthodox church such as the government-backed Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) or risk being banned in Ukrainian courts.

As Ukrainian-Canadian political science Professor Ivan Katchanovski noted on X, despite government persecution, the UOC still owns the largest number of parishes with 9,107 compared to 5,194 among other Orthodox churches. A complete ban on the UOC would entail a potentially huge transfer of buildings and property to the government-favored OCU.

The move comes as Ukraine continues its NATO-backed adventurist invasion of Russia’s Kursk region, while Ukrainian troops keep losing territory in the Donbass to Russia. The situation for Ukrainian forces in the region has been described as “catastrophic” by military analyst Julian Repke in the German tabloid Bild.

On Monday, Ukrainian authorities ordered the evacuation of the eastern city of Pokrovsk in Donetsk, which was previously home to over 65,000 residents. About 53,000 people, including approximately 4,000 children, now remain in the city with Ukrainian authorities warning that Russia will likely take both Pokrovsk and its surrounding villages within the next two weeks. 

According to Strana.ua, three companies of a battalion of the Ukrainian National Guard, including their commanders, refused to execute the orders of the military high command because of a “huge personnel shortage.” Ukrainian troops are outnumbered by Russian troops by a ratio of one to three. Ukrainian soldiers are reportedly also deserting in large numbers, in what are growing indications of the unfolding disintegration of the Ukrainian armed forces.

This is not the first time that the Ukrainian government has escalated its attack on democratic rights and efforts to whip up ethnic tensions amid a severe military crisis. In March of last year, Zelensky announced the impending eviction of UOC monks from the 980-year-old Pechersk Lavra monastery complex, a well known historical and religious site in Kiev, just as the Ukrainian government made public plans to continue pouring its troops into the “meat grinder” of Bakhmut where Russian and Ukrainian soldiers died in the tens of thousands.

At the time, Zelensky indicated that the eviction was just the start of a broader campaign to whip up religious and ethnic xenophobia stating, “We will continue this movement. We will not allow the terrorist state any opportunity to manipulate the spiritual life of our people, to destroy Ukrainian shrines—our Lavras—or to steal any valuables from them.”

While the UOC has had a long-standing affiliation with the Russian Orthodox Church, it declared its independence from Moscow in May 2022, in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The Russian Orthodox Church still includes UOC-affiliated clergy in its work, however. 

In 1991, only 39 percent of Ukrainians identified as Orthodox Christian. As a result of the disorientation caused by decades of Stalinism and the devastating socio-economic consequences of capitalist restoration, in the years following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, religious sentiments and obscurantism grew. Various rival branches of the Orthodox Church emerged, each with their own geopolitical orientation and political allegiances. By 2015, a Pew Research Center study found that approximately 78 percent of Ukraine’s adult population identified as Orthodox Christian.

Following the 2014 Western-backed coup in Kiev, the right-wing nationalist government of Petro Poroshenko intervened strongly in the creation and promotion of a single Kiev-aligned Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) in opposition to the Moscow-aligned Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Both antecedent separate Orthodox churches of the OCU had supported the 2014 Maidan coup and would become a central part of the NATO-aligned Poroshenko  government’s push to promote nationalism, militarism and anti-Russian sentiment.

The government-backed Orthodox Church of Ukraine was formed in 2018, out of these two smaller rival pro-Maidan Orthodox churches. In 2019, the OCU was granted independence or “autocephaly” from the Moscow-based Patriarchate under Patriarch Kirill, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin. 

Since the 2019 split from Moscow, the two separate churches have been engaged in an embittered rivalry over property, parishioners and religious sites. In this conflict, the Kiev-aligned OCU has received the full backing of the right-wing Ukrainian government, of which it has become an integral part. The invasion by Russia in February 2022, marked a new stage in the religious and political war between the two churches with Kiev moving quickly to denounce the UOC as “collaborators.”

In October of 2022, Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU), which maintains close ties to the far-right, began to regularly carry out raids in search of “anti-Ukrainian” materials at UOC churches, impose sanctions on its bishops and supporters, and open criminal cases against dozens of its clergymen.

For centuries, the Orthodox Church in both Russia and Ukraine has promoted obscurantism, nationalism and anti-Semitism. Its clergy members have been guilty of participating in some of the worst anti-Jewish pogroms of the past, and continue to maintain close relations with the far-right in both countries.

However, there is clearly nothing progressive in Zelensky’s crackdown on one religious organization while supporting its equally reactionary rival. It is part of the systematic efforts to place far-right Ukrainian nationalism and anti-Russian chauvinism at the center of the ideology and politics of the Ukrainian state. 

The Ukrainian far-right has endorsed the government’s escalating attacks on the Church, while egging Zelensky on to take even more drastic measures. 

The Chief of Staff of the neo-Nazi Azov brigade Bohdan Krotevuxh wrote on X, “According to the UOC, this is not yet a ban, it is only the first step. So continue to fight the Russian FSB agent network—the UOC.”

Meanwhile social media accounts of the neo-fascist Right Sector organization complained that “It took almost a year for the Verkhovna Rada to pass a law in the second reading prohibiting the activities of religious organizations associated with the Russian Federation. But here, too, the law is not without tolerance. According to the law, the UOC is given nine months to sever ties with the Russian Orthodox Church. As if ten years of war were not enough.”

These same fascist forces have also praised Zelensky’s high-risk invasion of Russia’s Kursk region which they have labeled “historically Ukrainian.” The Ukrainian far-right has long laid claims to the Kursk region and several other Russian regions which it seeks to integrate into a “Greater Ukraine”. 

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/08/23/joia-a23.html

=======================

Ukrainian Orthodox schismatics seized country’s largest church, journalism group says

During an overnight liturgy, about 100 unidentified people wearing camouflage and balaclavas broke into the cathedral

MOSCOW, October 17. 2024/TASS/. The Orthodox Church of Ukraine seized the St. Michael's Cathedral in Cherkassy that belongs to the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church, the Union of Orthodox Journalists said.

"The UOC cathedral in Cherkassy has been seized by supporters of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine," the group said on Telegram.

During an overnight liturgy, about 100 unidentified people wearing camouflage and balaclavas broke into the cathedral. They ejected the believers out of the premises, took away their cell phones, preventing them from making videos, and tore down video surveillance cameras. One of the intruders opened fire with a gas pistol, and then a fight ensued. The parishioners were able to beat back the first attack.

After the intruders fled the cathedral, some holy items such as icons, along with money, documents and computers were found missing from the premises. Metropolitan Theodosius, who leads the local diocese, made a statement immediately after the attack, which blamed officials of helping the raid, as one of the assailants was a city council member. People defending the church apprehended the lawmaker and handed him over to the police.

Reprisals against the Ukrainian Orthodox Church started in Ukraine following a coup in 2014, under then-President Pyotr Poroshenko. The so-called Orthodox Church of Ukraine was created in December 2018 from two schismatic organizations, with the support of the Patriarch of Constantinople. Since then, with the encouragement of the authorities, schismatics from that church have been forcibly seizing UOC churches and attacking priests. On August 24, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky signed into law a bill that allows banning the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. The bill had cleared the legislature shortly before.

https://tass.com/society/1857457

=====================

PLEASE VISIT:

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT — SINCE 2005.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

         RABID ATHEIST.

         WELCOME TO THIS INSANE WORLD….

AGENT ZELENSKY OF MI6 WORKS IN MYSTERIOUS WAYS....