Paul
Goble
Staunton, January 7 – Exactly a year
ago, the Ecumenical Patriarch in Constantinople extended autocephaly to the Ukrainian
Orthodox Church, making it independent of the Moscow Patriarchate and
fulfilling both the longstanding dreams of many Ukrainians and the political
program of then-president Petro Poroshenko.
Since Poroshenko’s defeat by
Vladimir Zelensky, there has been a slowdown in the shift of Ukrainian parishes
from the Moscow to the autocephalous Ukrainian church. Five hundred parishes
shifted before that time; but only 100 have done so since, although more are
likely to in the future.
What has not happened is any
significant shift back: only two of the 600 parishes which earlier shifted from
the ROC MP have shifted back, an indication that while the move away from
Moscow may have slowed, it has hardly stopped, and that Moscow Patriarch Kirill
has not reaped the benefits from Zelensky’s victory he and the Kremlin
expected.
At the same time, the Ukrainian
church has gained international support in the form of recognition by two Orthodox
churches, Greece and Alexandria, and expects to receive it from four other patriarchates
soon (unian.net/society/10820693-epifaniy-ozhidaet-priznaniya-pcu-so-storony-eshche-chetyreh-cerkvey.html
and radiosvoboda.org/a/tserkva-pravoslavna/30358786.html).
Moscow both religious and secular was
wrong to think that Ukrainian autocephaly was only a Poroshenko project, that
it would end with his departure from office or that it would be limited in its
impact to Ukraine and not affect the Moscow Patriarchate’s standing abroad and
at home, Aleksandr Soldatov says (novayagazeta.ru/articles/2020/01/07/83364-godovschina-tomosa).
The specialist on church affairs
says that autocephaly is something large numbers of Ukrainians are committed to
and that the existence of an autocephalous Ukrainian Orthodox church means that
“the influence of the ROC MP is fading away,” first and foremost in Ukraine but
not only there and not only outside of Russia.
According to Soldatov, “the only
achievement of the Moscow Patriarchate during the presidency of Zelensky has
been stopping the process of renaming the UOC MP by a decision of the Ukrainian
Supreme Court.” Otherwise, it has remained on the defensive there and is
gradually losing out in the Orthodox world more generally.
At the start of this year, Soldatov
says, the UOC MP still is the largest church in Ukraine with more than 13,000
parishes, but the autocephalous UOC has “about 8,000” and is growing rather
than declining. In addition, there are “almost
4,000” Greek Catholic (“Uniate”) parishes and 20 loyal to Filaret’s UOC KP.
Soldatov argues that “the chain of foreign
policy defeats of the Moscow Patriarchate is reducing the influence of
Patriarch Kirill in domestic Russian political life.” That doesn’t mean that he
is about to be sent into retirement in favor of Tikhon, Putin’s favorite
Orthodox hierarch. But it does mean the patriarch is playing defense not
offense.
A slightly but only slightly more
upbeat assessment of the position of the ROC MP in Ukraine and of Kirill more
generally is offered by Andrey Melnikov, head of NG-Religii (ng.ru/faith/2020-01-05/100_tomos050120.html).
He suggests that now it is obvious that many Ukrainians are sympathetic to the
Moscow church, a victory for Kirill.
And he argues that Kirill’s moves to
convene an all-Orthodox meeting later this year show that the Moscow patriarch
is not without influence. But in making that suggestion, Melnikov stresses two things.
On the one hand, Moscow’s position is far weaker now than it was, something the
Kremlin is anything but happy about.
And on the other, Ukrainian autocephaly,
which Kirill first thought he could block and then acted as if he could
reverse, is real and almost certainly permanent. That and not the back and
forth among religious leaders in the Orthodox world is the most important
result of one year of Ukrainian autocephaly.
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