The Orthodox Easter celebrations will take place in a week in Ukraine, on Sunday, April 24. They should bring out the religious divisions that the Russian invasion has been exacerbating for a month and a half. In Zaporizhia, the Moscow Patriarchate is housed in the imposing cathedral on the main avenue. There reigns supreme the Metropolitan Louka who recently justified the war in Ukraine by the need to cleanse the country of the vice which has contaminated it, coming from a Europe supposedly subject to homosexual perversion.
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This kind of sermons completed to dissuade Tetyana. She had been attending the Moscow Patriarchate Church until then, but she wants to change parishes. “Before we didn’t really make the difference, we went to church without wondering what patriarchy it depended onsays Tetyana. With the war, that changes. I will go to the Ukrainian church, because the Moscow Patriarchate supports the war. He blesses the atrocities that are committed in his name.”
In Ukraine, the majority Orthodox population is thus divided between the faithful of the Moscow Patriarchate and those of the new Ukrainian church, which claims to be independent of Russian supervision. Since the beginning of the Russian invasion, several parishes of the Moscow Patriarchate in Ukraine have distanced themselves from the belligerent positions of their clergy. But most continue to serve the Kremlin’s ideology, especially in the occupied areas of the Zaporizhia region. “There are occupied villages where the priests of the Moscow Patriarchate have reported to the Russians Ukrainian citizens who participated in the 2014 war against the pro-Russians”affirms Vladislav Moroko, in charge of religions within the regional administration.
The charge is even more virulent coming from Bishop Fotiy, of the Orthodox Church in Ukraine. For him, the parishes of the Moscow Patriarchate in Ukraine are filled with enemies from within who preach against their own country. “Since the beginning of the war, several priests of the Moscow Patriarchate in Ukraine have been arrestedreports the bishop, because they had revealed to the Russians the positions of the Ukrainian army, or even because they had drawn marks on the ground to help the Russians to aim precisely at certain targets.”
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With the war, a question came back: should the patriarchy of Moscow be banned in Ukraine, even if it means unleashing even more the anger of the Kremlin? Vladislav Moroko, from the regional administration, has a clear opinion: “Anyway, I don’t see how the conflict could escalate any further, given that Russia is already brandishing the nuclear threat. So maybe it’s the right time to strike hard and ban the Moscow patriarchy in Ukraine. “
In the meantime, each Ukrainian believer is called upon to choose his camp by choosing his church. This will be one of the challenges next Sunday of the Orthodox Easter celebrations.