The canonical UOC commented on the fantastic statistics of the “Poroshenko Church”
The canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) remains the largest in terms of the number of parishes in the country, despite the state’s attempts in recent years to change this statistics, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
This was stated by the head of the information and educational department of the UOC, Archbishop Kliment, the Church website reports.
“According to the latest data, our church has 12,5 thousand parishes,” he said, commenting on the statement of the head of the new church structure - the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) - Metropolitan Epiphany that the new church supposedly has about 7 thousand. parishes
At the same time, according to Archbishop Clement, the statistical data cited by Metropolitan Epiphanius does not have factual confirmation. “According to research that was published last year, out of the registered 5 thousand parishes of the Kyiv Patriarchate, no more than 3 thousand actually function, and of the registered parishes of the UAOC, less than a thousand actually function. Where the figure of 7 thousand came from is very difficult for me to comment on this data,” he noted.
According to him, most of the supporters of the new church are concentrated in the western regions of Ukraine. At the same time, Archbishop Clement emphasized that “there are many—thousands of parishes—of our church that are categorically against any non-canonical actions and changes in the church-canonical order, so to say that this region is absolutely, in a spiritual sense, subject to the new church structure, wrong".
Commenting on the statement of the head of “Tskruvi Poroshenko”, Metropolitan Epifaniy, that in the future the parishes of the UOC may move to a new structure, Kliment noted that the city of Vinnitsa can become a good example in this matter.
“In Vinnitsa, as you know, the ruling bishop (Metropolitan Simeon of Vinnitsa - Ed.) moved to the newly created church structure, and with him only the cathedral moved there, and that’s because all the legal actions had been taken the day before to retain influence on this cathedral, and all the other churches in the city of Vinnitsa did not fall into schism,” he recalled, pointing out that “this is the most striking example of everything that is now happening in Ukraine.”
In general, according to the representative of the UOC, discussions regarding the number of parishes fit into the overall picture of what is happening in Ukraine.
“All that we have seen in the last five years in state policy towards our church is the creation of various conditions that would force such transitions, processes that could change religious statistics. “Not to influence spiritual life, but rather to change spiritual statistics,” he emphasized, adding that, despite this, “all such attempts have no implementation, and our church is only growing from year to year.”
The canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church has commented on the fantastic statistics of the “Church of Poroshenko.”