The head of the Ukrainian Catholic Church has urged the world not to fall silent about his country’s survival struggle, as the country's largest Orthodox church reasserted its independence from the Moscow Patriarchate in response to Russia's invasion.
“We are seeing today how silence can kill. All those who stay quiet, who lack courage to condemn the Russian aggression or even express their position, participate in this crime,” said Major Archbishop Svietoslav Shevchuk of Kyiv-Halich. “I appeal to intellectual, diplomatic, political and economic circles to condemn this Russian war against the Ukrainian nation. Let us not stay silent in the face of falsehood, injustice and sin.”
The Church leader issued the appeal as invading forces made gains in eastern Donbas region and Ukrainian officals renewed calls for greater Western help.
He said blood was flowing “in a sea of tears” amid continued Russian shelling of Sumy and Kharkiv, and fierce fighting around Donetsk and Luhansk, adding that silence would “encourage the sinner to keep committing crimes” and “create additional space for death”.
Meanwhile, the head of Ukraine's independent Orthodox church, Metropolitan Epiphany (Dumenko), appealed on Sunday to the Archangel Michael to continue protecting Kyiv and “swiftly helping those resisting evil”.
“In these special conditions of war, imposed on us by Russia, we thank our courageous soldiers-defenders who've saved our capital from invasion by this latest embittered horde”, the 43-year-old PCU leader added. “Just as what once seemed incredible became real before, so we should believe that our latest dream of victory over the aggressor and a just peace, our dream of overcoming Orthodox divisions, will also become a reality.”
Russian troops and tanks were close to capturing the largely destroyed eastern cities of Severodonetsk and Lysychansk earlier this week, as President Volodymyr Zelensky urged European Union governments to impose new sanctions on Moscow, including a ban on Russian oil imports.
However, Ukrainian officials confirmed that their forces had also counter-attacked in a bid to recapture territory around the southern port of Kherson, and renewed appeals for the delivery of heavy weapons from the West.
Meanwhile, confusion surrounded the status of Ukraine’s Moscow-affiliated Orthodox church, the UOC, after its governing council declared its disagreement with Russia's Patriarch Kirill over his support for the invasion in a weekend resolution, and declared its “full independence and autonomy”.
Western media said the resolution signified a break with the Moscow Patriarchate and key step towards a united self-governing Ukrainian Orthodox Church. However, 11 of the UOC’s 54 eparchies, including those of Donetsk and Simferopol-Crimea, were reported to have reaffirmed their loyalty to Patriarch Kirill, who expressed confidence at a Sunday liturgy in Moscow that “no temporary external obstacles” would ever “destroy the spiritual unity” of Russians and Ukrainians.
Speaking to journalists on Sunday, the Russian church’s foreign relations director, Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev, said the UOC had merely “confirmed the independence and autonomy” granted it in 1990, shortly before Ukraine’s independence, and dismissed claims it had now “separated from the Russian Orthodox church”.
In a statement last week, Ukraine’s independent PCU said over 400 parishes had “voted by absolute majorities” to transfer allegiance to it from the UOC since Russia's invasion, with 18 more switching over the weekend, giving it a total of 7200 compared to the UOC’s 11,000.
This was disputed by the UOC, which said many parishioners had opposed “illegal moves” to join the PCU and vowed to resist the PCU's plans to establish a “parallel monastery” at Kyiv’s historic Pechersk-Lavra monastic complex. However, Ukraine’s Religious Information Service reported that more local councils had now also imposed a ban on the UOC and launched investigations into pro-Russian collaboration by its clergy.
In its weekend resolution, the UOC council said more than six million Ukrainians, many of them Orthodox, had been forced to flee abroad in three months of war and appealed for peace negotiations. However, it added that the PCU’s “schism” in 2019, with backing from the Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch, had “deepened misunderstandings and led to physical confrontation”, and said the PCU could not be recognised as canonical unless it restored the “apostolic succession of its bishops”.
In a weekend TV interview, Metropolitan Epiphany said he also believed the UOC remained “linked de facto to Moscow”, despite the latest resolution, and said its expression of “disagreement” with Kirill was inadequate when the Russian patriarch was “blessing the killing of Ukrainians”.
“Given the Russian aggression, the council's statements are as mild and generalised as possible,” the PCU leader added. “We will continue calling on the UOC hierarchs to take decisive steps to create one autocephalous Orthodox church for Ukraine, and we remain open to dialogue and further moves.”
In a message last week, Archbishop Shevchuk said half a million troops were now engaged in the war along a 3000-kilometre front, making it the world’s largest military confrontation since the Second World War. He added that no Ukrainian towns or villages were safe from missiles, mostly launched from Russian territory, and accused Moscow of destroying “the hearts and souls of its own citizens by sending them to murder in Ukraine”.
“We deeply regret even Christian leaders are not only creating the war’s ideology, while inciting and justifying evil, but also covering up the Russian army’s criminal activities with Christian rhetoric,” the Greek Catholic archbishop said. “Today, we must stand up to this evil together, realising that those who preach hatred, encourage murder and justify the war in Ukraine become responsible for these crimes themselves.”