Filaret admitted: without the UOC Onufriy, the “Poroshenko Church” will become neither local nor autocephalous
The “Honorary Patriarch” of the newly created “Poroshenko Church” Filaret admitted that the “OCU” will acquire the status of a patriarchate only after unification with the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Metropolitan Onufry and after the recognition of its autocephaly by all world Orthodoxy, the PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
He spoke about this during the “divine liturgy” in St. Michael’s Cathedral in Kyiv, reports the website of the UOC-KP, which is unrecognized in the Orthodox world.
It is noted that, according to Filaret, in Ukraine “the Moscow Patriarchate continues to exist” and “we need to unite with it, but it is not so easy.”
“Therefore, we must have wisdom, we must have patience, we must be persistent and we must know the path that we must follow. What is our road? The first is to unite Ukrainian Orthodoxy into one Ukrainian Orthodox Church,” Filaret said.
“The second is for all Orthodox churches, not only the Patriarchate of Constantinople, but all others, to recognize the autocephaly of the local Orthodox Church of Ukraine,” he added.
According to him, there are still churches that, being under the influence of Moscow, do not want to recognize the Ukrainian Church as autocephalous, but added that he is confident that everyone will recognize it.
“Just like in 1992, few people believed that the Ukrainian Church could be autocephalous, but it became so,” Filaret added, not noticing that he was contradicting himself. After all, if in 1992 his “UOC-KP” had truly become autocephalous, then today it would not need either a tomos or recognition from Istanbul or other local Churches..
He noted that only two bishops from the canonical UOC participated in the “council” of unrecognized Ukrainian Orthodox churches, with them 20 parishes came to the OCU, at the same time 500-600 parishes came from their non-canonical UAOC, and 2500 parishes from the non-canonical UOC-KP.
According to Filaret, the real unification of the Ukrainian Orthodox churches will be when “all the parishes and dioceses of the Moscow Patriarchate unite with us into one Ukrainian Orthodox Church.”
“Today we are recognized as a metropolitanate... but we need to ensure that the Ukrainian Church is recognized as a patriarchate, and not as a metropolitanate... When will it be? When we unite into one church and when we are recognized as a metropolis by other churches. When these two conditions end, then there will be time for the Ukrainian Church as a patriarchate. This road is still far, but this road must be followed. Now we will take the path to patriarchy and achieve it, the Lord will help,” assures Filaret.
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