New Ukraine Church Risks Sparking Fresh Violence
KYIV (AP) -- The rough-looking young men brought clubs and brass knuckles to the Pechersk Monastery in Kyiv, one of Orthodox Christianity’s most important pilgrimage sites, apparently seeking to disrupt worship.
The incidents a week ago underline the tensions in Ukraine as it prepares to establish a full-fledged Orthodox church of its own.
The planned religious rupture from the Russian Orthodox Church is a potent possibly explosive mix of politics, religious faith and national identity.
The imminent creation of the new Ukrainian church raises deep concerns about what will happen to the approximately 12,000 churches in Ukraine that are now under the Moscow Patriarchate.
"The question of what will happen to the property of the Orthodox churches existing in Ukraine after the emergence of a single local church is key and could be one of the most painful” issues of the Orthodox split, Volodymyr Fesenko, an analyst at the Ukrainian think tank Penta, said.
Since the late 1600s, the Orthodox Church in Ukraine had been a wing of the Russian Orthodox Church rather than ecclesiastically independent or "autocephalous.”
Many Ukrainians chafed at that arrangement, resenting its implication that Ukraine was a vassal state of Russia.
The Istanbul-based patriarchate last week removed an anathema against Ukrainian church leaders, a major step toward granting full recognition to a Ukrainian church that does not answer to the Moscow Patriarchate.
In recent years, about 50 churches in Ukraine that were under the Moscow Patriarchate have been forcibly seized and transferred to the Kyiv Patriarchate, according to Metropolitan Antony Pakanich of the Moscow-loyal Ukrainian Church.
"People have been forcibly dragged out of our temples, the locks have been sawed off,” he told the Associated Press. "People in camouflage and balaclavas, with insignia of radical organizations, have come and beat our believers and priests.”
Patriarch Filaret, head of the largest of the schismatic Ukrainian Orthodox churches, said "creating a single Orthodox Church in Ukraine does not mean that the Russian Orthodox Church does not have the right to exist on our territory.”
But some Ukrainian nationalists appear ready to use force. In September, radical right-wingers broke into a church in western Ukraine, beat up a priest, drove parishioners away and locked up the building.
The war between Ukrainian government forces and Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine, which began in 2014 and has killed at least 10,000 people, has also sharply increased the hostility toward the Moscow Patriarchate churches.
Father Sergii Dmitriev, a chaplain in the Ukrainian army, was once part of the Moscow church but switched to the Kyiv Patriarchate after the Russia-linked church began to refuse holding funerals for Ukrainian soldiers killed in the war.
"To be in the Moscow Patriarchate is to take part in the murder of Ukrainians,” he told the AP. "Not only those who pull the trigger are responsible, but those who bless the pulling of the trigger.”
With such passions on both sides, the cleric feared that more violence between the two uneasy neighbors lay ahead.
"The birth of a new Ukrainian church is taking place amid throes for which everyone should be prepared,” he warned.
The incidents a week ago underline the tensions in Ukraine as it prepares to establish a full-fledged Orthodox church of its own.
The planned religious rupture from the Russian Orthodox Church is a potent possibly explosive mix of politics, religious faith and national identity.
The imminent creation of the new Ukrainian church raises deep concerns about what will happen to the approximately 12,000 churches in Ukraine that are now under the Moscow Patriarchate.
"The question of what will happen to the property of the Orthodox churches existing in Ukraine after the emergence of a single local church is key and could be one of the most painful” issues of the Orthodox split, Volodymyr Fesenko, an analyst at the Ukrainian think tank Penta, said.
Since the late 1600s, the Orthodox Church in Ukraine had been a wing of the Russian Orthodox Church rather than ecclesiastically independent or "autocephalous.”
Many Ukrainians chafed at that arrangement, resenting its implication that Ukraine was a vassal state of Russia.
The Istanbul-based patriarchate last week removed an anathema against Ukrainian church leaders, a major step toward granting full recognition to a Ukrainian church that does not answer to the Moscow Patriarchate.
In recent years, about 50 churches in Ukraine that were under the Moscow Patriarchate have been forcibly seized and transferred to the Kyiv Patriarchate, according to Metropolitan Antony Pakanich of the Moscow-loyal Ukrainian Church.
"People have been forcibly dragged out of our temples, the locks have been sawed off,” he told the Associated Press. "People in camouflage and balaclavas, with insignia of radical organizations, have come and beat our believers and priests.”
Patriarch Filaret, head of the largest of the schismatic Ukrainian Orthodox churches, said "creating a single Orthodox Church in Ukraine does not mean that the Russian Orthodox Church does not have the right to exist on our territory.”
But some Ukrainian nationalists appear ready to use force. In September, radical right-wingers broke into a church in western Ukraine, beat up a priest, drove parishioners away and locked up the building.
The war between Ukrainian government forces and Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine, which began in 2014 and has killed at least 10,000 people, has also sharply increased the hostility toward the Moscow Patriarchate churches.
Father Sergii Dmitriev, a chaplain in the Ukrainian army, was once part of the Moscow church but switched to the Kyiv Patriarchate after the Russia-linked church began to refuse holding funerals for Ukrainian soldiers killed in the war.
"To be in the Moscow Patriarchate is to take part in the murder of Ukrainians,” he told the AP. "Not only those who pull the trigger are responsible, but those who bless the pulling of the trigger.”
With such passions on both sides, the cleric feared that more violence between the two uneasy neighbors lay ahead.
"The birth of a new Ukrainian church is taking place amid throes for which everyone should be prepared,” he warned.