OCU calls unwillingness of people to join Dumenko "ignorance of the Bible"

Roman Hryschuk, “priest” of the OCU from the Chernivtsi region, explained the unwillingness of the believers and clergy of the UOC to move to the OCU by “their ignorance of the Bible.” He wrote about this on his Facebook page.

According to Hryschuk, believers of the UOC are allegedly manipulating the notion of "Unity in Christ" and the call to "keep pure faith."

The “priest” expressed regret that only 34 parishes of the UOC in the Chernivtsi region “transferred” to the OCU from the moment they received the Tomos: “There are several reasons for this. <...> For these reasons and consequences, we skip forward only Transcarpathia. There are generally 0 transitions from the start of a full-scale invasion.”

Hryschuk named the “illiteracy of the clergy” of the Church as the first reason why communities of the UOC do not join the OCU. According to him, only a quarter of the priests of the UOC have a secondary or higher theological education, and therefore they “do not understand the processes of formation of local Orthodox Churches, the ways of proclaiming, fighting, gaining, and recognizing autocephaly.”

He said that behind the clergy of the UOC there are hierarchs and a certain system "until the end". Hryschuk called hierarchs of the UOC, in particular, Metropolitan Longin of Bancheny, who adopted about 400 children, the "Bukovyna guru".

In his publication, the “priest” also wrote that people do not go to the OCU because of the “simplicity” of the Primate of the UOC, His Beatitude Metropolitan Onuphry, whom believers “easily perceive and even thank.”

As reported by the UOJ, the "hierarch" of the UOC-KP urged, due to an acute personnel crisis, to look for men in the villages who would become "priests" of the OCU.

We also wrote that the head of the OCU, Epifaniy Dumenko, called the quote from the Gospel of John a “proverb”.