Expert: All-Ukrainian Cross Procession is underway to put a stop to conflict insanity in Ukraine

Cross Procession, organized by the Ukrainian Orthodox Church is antimilitary. It’ll fuse the West and the East becoming a benchmark in our current year’s church life. It was stated by famous journalist and publicist Vasiliy Anisimov, as is reported by Pravoslaviye.Ru.

The journalist underlined it is not the first antimilitary action of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. “From the very beginning of Maidan confrontation the Church not only came out for a peaceful dialogue but also physically stood between the hostile parties who had blood on their hands, alleviating the situation with the Cross and Gospel. These were the monks of the Dime (Desiatinnyi) Monastery. When a month later a lot of more blood was shed, over a hundred Maidan activists and two dozen “Berkut” law enforcement fighters, more than one thousand people were injured and wounded, the Church declared mourning, which lasted throughout the whole Lenten period, and called to find a way to mutual forgiveness and reconciliation via repentance. After the war in Donbass broke out, the UOC held an “antimilitary Synod” in June 2014 that made peacemaking addresses for the nation and power. It supported truce, announced by the president at that time, the first Minsk agreements, and then the second ones. All those horrible 2,5 years the Ukrainian Orthodox Church has persisted in urging and praying to establish peace on our tormented land”, he said.      

“And today’s surveys prove that people want peace. However, this demand in peace is not at all highlighted in the Ukrainian media; on the contrary, all our TV channels are busy reporting round the clock how heavily the “Russian terrorist troops” were shooting in the ATO zone, how many Ukrainians they injured and killed, what adversity has Putin predestined for Ukraine… Any protest, even social, is defined as schemes and intrigues in favor of Putin and other “enemies” of Ukraine. This is a delusion state. He, who does not share a generally accepted point of view, is enlisted in the “fifth column”. The Orthodox Church is one of the enlisted, being stigmatized and defamed.  Recently in the “Ukraine” Palace anathematized M. Denisenko (Filaret) declared in the presence of the high rank authorities that His Beatitude Metropolitan Onuphry calls Ukrainian soldiers, ATO heroes, “assassinators”; that Orthodox priests, placing mobile phones on the military unit premises, are gunners of the Russian “Grads” etc. And it cannot be even refuted anywhere except for some unassuming Internet resources of the Church”, outraged the journalist.

“The Ukrainian Orthodox Church has always advocated unity of Ukraine. The first paragraph of Minsk agreements sets out Donbass being a part of Ukraine. If we decided to live together, if everybody agreed there is no other alternative than peaceful settlement of the conflict, then with God’s mercy let’s find will and courage within ourselves to stop this insanity. That is what All-Ukrainian Cross Procession, organized by the Church, is all about”, explained the expert.  

It will be reminded on the 3^rd of July began All-Ukrainian Cross Procession which will cover dioceses of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church with prayer for Ukraine. The Procession starts from two points – from the East (the Holy Dormition Svyatogorsk Lavra) and the West (the Holy Dormition Pochaev Lavra) on July 9. Two streams of our faithful will move towards each other to meet in Kiev on Vladimir Hill on the feast day of St. Prince Vladimir, Equal-to-the-Apostles, and Christening of Rus and then to make for the Holy Dormition Kiev-Pechersk Lavra .

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