Independent Ukrainian Orthodox Church born after split from Russian church control
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An independent Orthodox Church of Ukraine has been born with the blessing of Patriarch Bartholomew I. Ukraine’s President Petro Poroschenko heralded the split from Russia, but Moscow was less than pleased.
The Orthodox Church of Ukraine was formally granted independence at a ceremony in Istanbul on Saturday, completing a historic split from Russian religious control that had been ongoing since 1868.
The independence decree will force Ukrainian clerics to pick sides between the Moscow-backed Ukrainian churches and the new church as fighting persists in eastern Ukraine between government forces and Russia-backed rebels.
Ukrainian leaders see an independent church as a crucial bulwark against Russian interference, but Russia strongly opposes the split, comparing it to the Great Schism of 1054 that divided Christianity into the Eastern Orthodox churches, with leadership based in present-day Istanbul, and the Catholic Church in Rome.
Vladimir Legoida, a spokesman for the Moscow church, denounced the decree as “a document that is the result of irrepressible political and personal ambitions”, the AFP news agency reported.
It had been “signed in violation of the canons and therefore not possessing any canonical force”, Legoida said in a statement.
