FB: There're fewer parishioners than clergy in Khmelnytsky Сathedral of OCU
“Bishop” Vasily (Pavel) Yuristy of the OCU published photos of his “divine service” on the eve of the Ascension of the Lord in the St. Andrew the First-Called Cathedral.
There are fewer parishioners than clerics at the "service" in the OCU Cathedral in Khmelnytsky. This is evidenced by the photographs published on June 9 on his Facebook page by the Khmelnytsky "bishop" of the OCU Pavel Yuristy.
On the eve of the feast of the Ascension of the Lord, the "bishop" celebrated a vigil with a litia at the Cathedral. The photo shows that the number of the clergy and parishioners present there is approximately the same.
“But what about the poll data? This is, like, the most influential denomination of Ukraine,” the abbot of the Holy Trinity Jonah Monastery of the UOC in Kyiv, Archbishop Jonah (Cherepanov), commented on the events.
Social network users noted that even in small rural churches of the UOC there are much more parishioners at services than in the cathedrals of the OCU.
“We should look for the positive – but there are so many clerics! And there is free space!”, “They simply complied with quarantine restrictions even before the appearance of the coronavirus,” this is how Internet users reacted to the post of the UOC hierarch.
As reported, earlier "Archbishop" Ivan (Eustratiy) Zoria of the OCU, who regularly uploads photo reports about his "services" at the Catherine Cathedral in Chernihiv, explained the consistently low number of parishioners by quarantine restrictions.
The UOJ also wrote that the KDA professor Sergei Bortnik analyzed the summary data on the confessions of the "Kyiv Tradition" as of 01.01.2020 and stated that the data of the State Service for Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Conscience contradicted the opinion of the superior popularity of the "Orthodox Church of Ukraine".
