An open letter of Archbishop of Bilogorodka Sylvester to Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew

An open letter

To His All-Holiness Bartholomew,

Archbishop of Constantinople – New Rome,

Ecumenical Patriarch

Your Holiness!

I am writing to you as Orthodox Christians around the world enter the Great and Holy Week. These days, we experience in a special way the Passion and Death on the Cross of our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ. We deepen with all our senses into the mystery of the salvation of the human race. But in these very days, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church is going through difficult trials, through its own personal Calvary. Every day, our churches are seized by force or even destroyed, violence is committed against our faithful, and local authorities make openly discriminatory decisions against our Church.

The Holy Apostle Paul teaches us that all members of the one Body of Christ should care for each other. And whether one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; or one member be honoured, all the members rejoice with it (1 Cor 12, 26). Therefore, in the family of the Local Orthodox Churches, there can be no other’s joy or grief. A wound inflicted on one Local Church becomes a wound for the entire Body of Christ. Today the Ukrainian Orthodox Church is suffering. And I dare to bring to Your Holiness our voice, full of tears and pain.

Unfortunately, today we see how one of the basic values of the democratic world, the right to freedom of conscience and religious belief, is being openly violated in Ukraine. It is quite obvious that since the end of 2022, the Ukrainian state has set a course for the gradual destruction of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

However, the most regrettable fact for us is that the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, established by Your Holiness’ Tomos in January 2019, is actively involved in the violence directed against thousands of communities and millions of believers of our Church.

There are numerous facts of direct violent seizures of churches of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, in which the priests of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine were directly involved. I will mention just a few shocking examples.

On March 28, 2023, a forceful seizure of the Cathedral of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in honor of the Nativity of Christ took place in Ivano-Frankivsk. The locks of the church were cut off, and the priests of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church who were in the church were driven out with tear gas. One of the priests fainted and had to receive emergency medical care. However, despite such obvious violence committed right in the temple of God, the priests of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine happily entered the church and began to perform services there, announcing that the church had now “passed” to another jurisdiction. This blatant seizure was recorded on video (see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0L5Qe8UoMo).

Video materials clearly indicate the direct participation of priests of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine in this action.

On April 2, 2023, in Khmelnytsky, at the Intercession Cathedral of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, a young man dressed in military uniform insulted a priest during the divine liturgy, throwing him off the pulpit and knocking the Gospel out of his hands. However, the media presented the conflict as a priest beating a soldier. Immediately afterward, without waiting for the results of the investigation, a crowd gathered at the church, held a spontaneous vote and made a completely illegitimate decision to transfer the cathedral to the jurisdiction of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine. On the same day, the official Facebook page of the Khmelnytsky Diocese of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine posted a message that the community of the Theotokos Protecting Veil Cathedral had allegedly decided to transfer to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine at its meeting. But this is an absolute lie! The community of the Theotokos Protecting Veil Cathedral did not make such a decision! Despite this, the head of the Khmelnytsky Diocese of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine stated that he accepts the Intercession Cathedral under his jurisdiction (https://www.facebook.com/pomisna.km/posts/pfbid0wG27Lt1zQZaj2rfDdxz1DiM8yZ9S49uetJvEvQHe7aFUgm6MHxL6MZQ6VqULf3Wdl). Today, priests of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine are performing services in the cathedral.

An even more egregious event occurred in Lviv. In March 2023, the Lviv City Council transferred to the use of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine a land plot on which the church of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in honor of St. Prince Volodymyr, the Equal-to-the-Apostles, had been located for many years. On April 6, 2023, the Orthodox Church of Ukraine initiated the demolition of this church. The Deputy Mayor of Lviv for Urban Development, Lubomyr Zubach, released photos and videos of the demolition process (https://www.facebook.com/LubomyrZubach/posts/pfbid02ExhkDh14L6d1h5GDTjYaYatDnRhG38R4cV2kmc12dNEYJ2fSzAxWgRvKqLQbF5Yol).

These photos and videos clearly show that before the demolition of the church, a priest of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine read some prayers near the church, after which he gave his blessing for the destruction of the church. Thus, the priest explicitly approved the destruction of the church, where for many years a prayer to God was heard and a Bloodless Sacrifice was offered! This was probably the only case in all the years of Ukraine’s independence when the church was not built but destroyed… The leadership of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine did not react in any way to this sad fact.

I would like to emphasize once again that all this outright violence is taking place not only with the silent support of law enforcement authorities, but also with the obvious support of the top leadership of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, which has not condemned what happened in Ivano-Frankivsk, Khmelnytsky or Lviv. In his sermons, Metropolitan Epifaniy limits himself to general appeals “not to perform evil acts even for a good purpose” (https://www.pomisna.info/uk/sermon-post/propovid-blazhennijshogo-mytropolyta-kyyivskogo-i-vsiyeyi-ukrayiny-epifaniya-v-p-yatu-nedilyu-velykogo-postu-3/). The Orthodox Church of Ukraine has not imposed any penalties on priests involved in the seizure of churches by force. There has also not been a single case where the leadership of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine has recognized the fact of illegal seizure of churches. Of course, not a single seized church has been returned to the communities of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

Many bishops and priests of our Church have been directly offered by representatives of the state authorities in private conversations to transfer to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, promising to leave them alone. Thus, representatives of the state exert direct pressure on the dioceses, monasteries and parishes of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, threatening them with reprisals if they refuse to transfer to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine.

We see a direct disregard not only for legal norms and democratic values but also for Christian morality. I must say clearly: the Tomos of autocephaly granted by Your Holiness to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine did not bring religious peace to Ukraine, but only provoked a new wave of confrontation and violence. Unfortunately, the hierarchs of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, having received the Tomos, took it as a sanction for violent actions against the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. This violence began already in 2019. But now, in the context of war, it is reaching its peak…

I also have to say frankly that the possibility of understanding between the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and the Orthodox Church of Ukraine has been rejected for many years. Violence against the communities of our Church, in which the bishops and priests of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine are involved (and sometimes they are the inspirers), has created a deep gap between us, which will hardly be overcome in the near future.

No repression against the Church has ever brought anything good to either the state or society. Nothing good can be built on violence and tears. Today we see that in many Ukrainian towns and villages where the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, with the help of local authorities, seized the churches of our Church, these churches are empty. At the same time, the communities of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church continue to worship with humbleness and obedience to the will of God in various private premises.

Your Holiness, I am convinced that you, as an educated theologian and as a church hierarch, are well aware that the pressure that the Ukrainian Orthodox Church is experiencing today cannot be justified from the point of view of Christian morality. And the fact that this pressure is being carried out with the support or participation of the bishops and priests of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine cannot but cause sadness and grief. However, the Orthodox Church of Ukraine was created by the Tomos of Your Holiness. Consequently, the responsibility for what is happening in the religious life of Ukraine today lies, among other things, with you personally. Unfortunately, the premature admission of the members of the Kyiv Patriarchate and the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church into church communion gave rise to a sense of all-permissiveness. And today this feeling has turned into outright religious violence…

In this difficult time for the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, I call on Your Holiness to raise your voice in defense of truth and good. Of course, you can ignore what is happening to Orthodox Christians in Ukraine. But the violence that is being perpetrated against the Ukrainian Orthodox Church today, unfortunately, may remain associated with your name in historical memory.

The history of the Church shows that any persecution against Christians only led to the internal strengthening of the Church. Therefore, even today, we believe that the suffering that the Ukrainian Orthodox Church is going through will only help it to be internally purified and spiritually strengthened. We believe that our Lord Jesus Christ, through the prayers of the Blessed Virgin Mary and all the saints of the Ukrainian land, will not leave us with His all-powerful help.

This letter is an open letter. I am sending it to the attention of the Primates of the Local Orthodox Churches and I am also sending it to the media.

With the hope of being heard by you,

SYLVESTER

Archbishop of Bilogorodka,

Vicar of the Kyiv Metropoly,

Rector of the Kyiv Theological Academy and Seminary

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