The news that Ukraine had finally created a unified national Orthodox Church on Dec. 15 brought swift reactions from the religious and political worlds — mostly positive, some negative.
The Unification Council, held in Kyiv’s Saint Sophia Cathedral, created the new independent Ukrainian Orthodox Church, elected its head, and approved its charter following a day of prayer and deliberations.
The new head of the church is the 39-year-old Epiphanius, born Serhii Dumenko. He now holds the title of Metropolitan of Kyiv and all Ukraine.
Representatives from the country’s three main Orthodox churches attended the Unification Council — the Kyiv Patriarchate, the Moscow Patriarchate, and the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, although no senior churchmen from the Moscow Patriarchate attended.
The creation of the church is the latest development in Ukraine’s long fight for the independence of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church from Russia. The move cuts religious ties dating from the 17th century, and takes the Ukrainian church out of subordination to Moscow.
Ukraine is expected to receive autocephaly from the highest body in world Orthodoxy, the Istanbul-based Ecumenical Patriarchate of the Eastern Orthodox Church, on Jan. 6.
For centuries, the Ukrainian Orthodox church was subordinate to the Russian church in the Eastern Orthodox hierarchy. The Russian church, in turn, is formally subordinate to the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Istanbul, which Eastern Orthodox believers refer to by its old name, Constantinople. However, the Russian church is by far the largest and most powerful of the Eastern Orthodox churches.
Calls for Ukraine to split from the Russian church intensified after Russia started its military occupation of the Ukrainian territory of Crimea in 2014, and later unleashed war in Ukraine’s east. The Moscow Church supported the Kremlin’s aggression, which hit its popularity in Ukraine.
The Ecumenical Patriarchate’s support of the independence of the Ukrainian Church created tensions between the Constantinople Church and the Russian Orthodox Church. As a result, the Moscow Patriarchate decided to cancel Eucharistic communion with Constantinople.
Read also: Ukraine’s Orthodox Church battles for independence
Religious reactions
The Constantinople Patriarchate in a Facebook post of Dec. 15 congratulated Ukraine on the holding of the Unification Council.
“It is with praise to God, great joy and satisfaction that the Ecumenical Patriarchate announces the successful completion of the work of the Unifying Synod (Sobor) — the foundational of the new Orthodox Autocephalous Church of Ukraine,” the post reads.
The Constantinople Patriarchate said that Epiphanius contacted Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople after the Ukrainian churchman was elected, expressing his respect and asking for blessings of the Mother Church.
Patriarch Bartholomew I, in return, invited Epiphanius to join the feast of Theophany, a Christian feast day celebrated on Jan. 6, to Phanar, a district in Istanbul, Turkey, where the Constantinople Patriarchate is based. There, Patriarch Bartholomew I will grant to Epiphanius a Tomos, a deed of autocephaly, or independence, for the new national church.
According to Russian online media TASS, Archbishop Clement of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Moscow Patriarchate said that the foundation of the new church hadn’t changed his church’s opinion about the Unification Council in Kyiv, which it considered illegitimate.
Ukraine celebrates
In his speech at Sofiivska Square after the Unification Council, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said that the event is as important as the independence referendum held in 1991.
Poroshenko recalled that Russian President Vladimir Putin had described the collapse of the Soviet Union as the main geopolitical disaster of the 20th century.
“The provision of autocephaly to Ukrainian Orthodoxy is a second geopolitical disaster (for Putin),” Poroshenko said. “This time, the scale is not of the century, but the millennium,” he added.
The Head of the Crimean Tatar Mejlis and lawmaker Refat Chubarov in a Facebook post of Dec. 15 said that receiving autocephaly for the Ukrainian Orthodox Church was a much broader question than one simply of religion.
“The Ukrainian nation has, perhaps, gained one of the most powerful tools that will provide and protect the true independence of Ukraine – a national Orthodox Church,” Chubarov’s post reads.
“Finally, the poisonous tentacles of Moscow, which prevented the Ukrainian nation from developing freely for centuries, have been cut away.”
International reaction
The U.S. Embassy in Ukraine called the event historic, and congratulated Ukraine on Twitter on Dec. 15.
“We congratulate Ukraine on today’s historic Council to establish a local, independent Ukrainian Orthodox Church, and we warmly congratulate Metropolitan Epifaniy as head of the new church,” the Twitter post reads.
“We support all Ukrainians’ ability to worship as they choose. Tolerance and restraint are key to a peaceful transition period so that people with different religious affiliations can live and prosper together,” the post continued.
The former chess grandmaster and a leader of the Russian opposition Garry Kasparov commented on the latest development too.
“Don’t underestimate the importance of this in Russia. For years, Putin has been telling Russians they are surrounded by enemies, but now they’re just feeling increasingly isolated and poor,” Kasparov’s post on Twitter reads.
But Russian opposition figure Alexey Navalny took the news bitterly, while also taking a swipe at Putin in a comment on Twitter on Dec. 15: “Today there (has been) an event of historic proportions. A schism. The synod in Kyiv will complete the creation of a national church in Ukraine. The Russian Orthodox Church will lose up to half of its last ‘living’ parishes. That which was forged over hundreds of years was destroyed by Putin and his idiots in four years. Putin is the enemy of the Russian world.”
