Viacheslav Kirilenko calls admission of the UOC KP to Minor Sophia “victory #2” in a humanitarian sphere

Former Minister of Culture, acting Vice-Premier on humanitarian issues Viacheslav Kirilenko announced key events in the humanitarian sphere. The second listed achievement, in his opinion, is the permission given to the Kiev Patriarchate to hold divine services in Minor Sophia church. He reported about it in his interview to Ukrinform.

“To put it in a nutshell, it breaks down in the following way: victory of Jamala at Eurovision contest is No1 victory. No 2 event is that the Kiev Patriarchate was allowed to serve in one of the churches of St. Sophia of Kiev,” announced Kirilenko.

According to him, this decision is “a direction towards the establishment of the Ukrainian Church.” “Ukrainian Orthodoxy should pursue the way of conciliarity and national unity around the Patriarch of Kiev, not that of Moscow,” the ex-Minister believes.

Viacheslav Kirilenko was a member of the UOC-KP Supreme Church Council when the decision on transfer of Minor Sophia was adopted. In May he was re-elected to the Council and expressed gratitude for his assistance in making the appropriate decision to let the KP have services in the temple.

Similar requests on the part of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church were declined. The Kiev Patriarchate chief declared that services on a rotational basis with Greek-Catholics are unacceptable, since, in his opinion, “having such alternate worships will inevitably lead to the likewise issues of having alternate divine services held by the communities of UOC KP and UGCC in the temples of both denominations.”