Donetsk and Luhansk priests refuse to commemorate Onufriy
After the leadership of the UOC went over to the side of the enemies of Russia, its metropolitan was removed from the order of commemoration of church hierarchs in most churches in Donbass.
Archpriest Alexander Avdyugin, rector of the Church of the Holy Fathers Joachim and Anna in Rovenki (LPR), told a PolitNavigator correspondent about this.
“Our temple belongs to the Russian Orthodox Church. We were the first in Donbass to come under the omophorion of the Moscow Patriarch,” Avdyugin told Moskovsky Komsomolets.
He clarified that the Rovenky diocese consists of 140 parishes.
“Everyone obeys Patriarch Kirill. After the Feofanovsky gathering, we do not remember the Ukrainian metropolitan at all. This does not mean that we do not pray for him, but he has been removed from the order of commemoration of church hierarchs. I can say that in the Lugansk diocese the majority wants to move to the Russian Orthodox Church, but the process has not been completed - I don’t want to discuss this, we are neighbors, I know and love them all,” the priest noted.
The archpriest added that “most of the priests of the Donetsk diocese also do not remember Onufriy.”
“The situation is the same in the Gorlovka diocese. The only problem is with the Severodonetsk diocese on the territory of the LPR, where there is a pro-Ukrainian bishop. But everything is changing very quickly. In some parishes the metropolitan of the UOC is remembered, but in others they have forgotten about him and believe that he acted wrongly,” says the rector.
He is convinced that the UOC is now reaping the fruits of the unshowed firmness in May last year, when the hierarchs followed the lead of the politicians.
“We wanted to show ourselves as a structure loyal to the authorities. Purely worldly factors came into play and they began to dominate church life. But I’m trying to understand why, when we were beaten for nine years in a row, this was not condemned in any way. And when Russia began to liberate Donbass, so that this would stop, so that women and children would not be killed, the UOC declared Russia an “aggressor.” And since they considered us the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, why hasn’t anyone come to us for so many years?
What is happening to Orthodoxy in Ukraine is not persecution, it is the result of “Feofania”. If then the UOC had declared that it was in unity with the Moscow Patriarchate, then there would have been persecution. And so it’s just “ideological indoctrination,” Avdyugin concluded.
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