Sat Apr 1, 2023 – 4:10 pm EDT
UKRAINE (LifeSiteNews) — The United Nations has sounded an alarm against the Volodymyr Zelensky government for targeting the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) with unjustified discrimination, and Orthodox prelates around the world have strongly concurred.
The UOC which was, until May of last year, subordinate to the Patriarchate of Moscow, is not to be confused with the newer, nationalist Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) which was formally constituted in December 2018 and January 2019.
Upon the initiation of Russia’s “special military operation” into Ukraine on February 24 of last year, despite their spiritual association with the invaders, Primate of the UOC, Metropolitan Onufriy, voiced “special love and support” for the Ukrainian armed forces, and called on Russian President Putin “to immediately stop the fratricidal war” (all translations from Google).
Later in May, in a protest against Russia’s invasion, a council of the UOC formally declared its “full independence” from the Patriarchate of Moscow, while in those same months, hundreds of UOC priests signed an open letter calling for Moscow’s Patriarch Kirill to face a religious tribunal over his support for the invasion.
Yet, as LifeSiteNews covered in December, due to
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