Orthodox Christians in the Ukraine are split between those still recognising Moscow’s authority and those who have asserted independence. The fear of incursion by Russian troops and a planned visit to Ukraine by the Ecumenical Patriarch make a rapprochement hard to envisage

Orthodox Christians in the Ukraine are split between those still recognising Moscow’s authority and those who have asserted independence. The fear of incursion by Russian troops and a planned visit to Ukraine by the Ecumenical Patriarch make a rapprochement hard to envisage

Despite the decreased number of parishioners, the small church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the centre of Lviv in western Ukraine still has three liturgies on Sunday. Yurii Fediv, a local deacon, told me that the number of attendees had dropped by around 80 to 90 per cent during the last year. Most had chosen to stay at home during the pandemic; others had switched to other parishes in the suburbs.

Fediv’s parish had been one of the first in Ukraine to break ties with the Moscow ­patriarchate in November 1989, two years before the collapse of the Soviet Union. The struggle for recognition of the independence, or autocephaly, of the Orthodox Church in Ukraine culminated in a Unification Council in Kiev in December 2018, which brought together the leaders of the various branches of the pro-autocephalous movement into a new Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU).

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