Filaret: There are now three Churches in Ukraine: UOC, OCU and UOC KP
"Patriarch of Kiev" Filaret stated he would lovingly accept those representatives of the OCU who would like to join the UOC KP.
The head of the UOC KP Filaret said that his religious structure would fondly accept representatives of the OCU. He said this at a briefing for journalists, which took place after the "Local Council" of the Kiev Patriarchate.
When asked by a journalist about how the UOC KP will build further relations with Epiphany and whether the OCU will exist as an independent religious structure, Filaret answered:
“This is their business. If they want to be part of the Kiev Patriarchate – we will accept them with love. If they do not want to be in the Kiev Patriarchate – they will exist as a separate church.”
In this case, according to Filaret, “Ukraine will have the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate; Orthodox Church in Ukraine (OCU), which has a tomos, but the tomos in its limited version and subordinate to the Patriarchate of Constantinople; and there will be a third independent Ukrainian Orthodox Church" (UOC KP – Ed.).
According to Filaret, this UOC KP "is not new, but the one that has continued its existence since 1992 and even earlier, because Patriarch Mstislav was elected in 1990."
In addition, the Resolution of the “Local Council” of the UOC KP says that "those eparchial administrations and religious communities that have re-registered their Statutes in favor of the OCU, but wish to be part of the Kiev Patriarchate, can affiliate with this structure."
Earlier, the UOJ wrote that the head of the Kiev Patriarchate believes that the liquidation of the UOC KP during the "Unification Council" was just formal.
