Scrutiny of Ukraine church draws praise, fear of overreach

KYIV, Ukraine — After its searches of holy sites belonging to Ukraine’s historic Orthodox church, the nation’s security agency posted photos of evidence it recovered — including rubles, Russian passports and leaflets with messages from the Moscow patriarch. Zelenskyy called for legislation that would forbid “religious organizations affiliated with centers of influence in the Russian Federation to operate in Ukraine.” He also wants a review of the “canonical” connection between the UOC and the Moscow Patriarchate — the center of the Russian Orthodox Church – and of the status of the revered, millennium-old Pechersk-Lavra monastery in Kyiv, now government-owned but largely used by the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Russia’s February invasion underscored the alliance between President Vladimir Putin and Moscow Patriarch Kirill, who said Russia was defending Ukrainians from Western liberalism and its “gay parades.” From the start, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church denounced the invasion and such justifications, backing Ukraine. Even so, some see the Ukrainian Orthodox Church as still aligned with Moscow and the “Russian world” concept of political and spiritual unity of Russians, Ukrainians and Belarussians. The UOC is being squeezed by all sides – from Russians claiming the church as their own to Ukrainians who see the OCU as Ukraine’s true church, said John Burgess, a Pittsburgh Theological Seminary professor and author of “Holy Rus’: The Rebirth of Orthodoxy in the New Russia.” Zelenskyy, too, is in a tight spot, Burgess said: “There’s such anti-Russian sentiment that anything that can be tainted as somehow pro-Russian, he gets a lot of pressure to do something about it.” But Prodromou says treating the entire UOC as disloyal “would be a mistake based on the empirical evidence and would also be imprudent because it would undermine the possibility of full reconciliation” between the two Orthodox churches.