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Local Orthodox Church to complete the cycle of developing independence, religious scholar Oleksandr Sagan believes

08.05.2018, 09:40
“For 20 years, a generation has grown up that took weapons against their state, and to a large extent it was done through the church, people with the icons stopped our columns of armored vehicles and tanks in Donbas, the priests were running with rifles and racking up polling stations,” he says.

In case where 20 per cent of religious organizations in a country are externally controlled, political independence cannot be complete. The year 2014 proved this.

 

This was stated in an interview with "Krayina" magazine by religious scholar Oleksandr Sagan,  Gazeta.ua reported.

 

“For 20 years, a generation has grown up that took weapons against their state, and to a large extent it was done through the church, people with the icons stopped our columns of armored vehicles and tanks in Donbas, the priests were running with rifles and racking up polling stations,” he says.

 

The local church will end the creation of political independence, according to the religious scholar.

 

“Our first president was a communist and did not understand the importance of the religious factor. Kravchuk did not support the efforts of the pro-Ukrainian forces who advocated the independence of the Church, and then even the Moscow Patriarchate in Ukraine (there was no Kyiv Patriarchate yet - Gazeta.ua) said that he wanted a local Church. A month before the referendum on independence, Metropolitan Filaret gathered a local council of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in the Kyiv-Caves Monastery. One of the issues was the ecclesiastical autocephaly on the agenda, almost all members of the council signed this appeal. For some reason, they filed this appeal to the Moscow Patriarchate, but Moscow is not our mother church,” he says.

 

We were under the jurisdiction of Constantinople, from which we have received our faith, Oleksandr Sagan stressed.

 

By the way, Moscow has still not responded to the request of 1991. Then it turned on the repression machine, the bishops experiences strong pressure, almost all refused from their signatures in the appeal, except Metropolitan Filaret and two more bishops. The formation of the Kyiv Patriarchate took place in 1992. It was hard to find a common denominator for appealing to the Ecumenical Patriarchate,” adds a religious scholar.