In view of previous merits: OCU shows “extreme oeconomy” to Filaret
The Synod of the OCU “banned” Filaret’s associates, and decided to take pity on him, given his previous merits, health and age.
On February 2, 2022, the OCU Synod considered the violation of the “canonical order” by Filaret and his followers, reports the OCU website.
The OCU did not say what kind of claims they had to Filaret but recalled that he had previously been forbidden to “convene and lead meetings to resolve issues of church administration, carry out ordinations, etc.” The Synod of the OCU decided “solely out of respect for the previous merits of His Grace Filaret (Denisenko) and considering his age and state of health” to apply “extreme oeconomy without taking tougher measures of canonical response to the violations committed by him”.
At the same time, the Synod of the OCU decided to punish Filaret's associates in the UOC-KP.
“The former Metropolitan Ioasaf (Shibaev) of Belgorod and Oboyan, the former Bishop of Belgorod-Dnistrovsky Filaret (Panka) and the former Bishop Peter (Moskalev) of Valuysk were summoned to the court of the Holy Synod of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine or gross violation of the canonical order, participation in illegal meetings and the so-called hierarchal ordinations in Kyiv on charges for which they are subject to defrocking. If absent, they are to be tried in absentia,” the OCU said.
“Ordained” by Filaret since 2019, the “hierarchs” of the UOC-KP in the OCU were called persons who “for robbery assignment of episcopal titles and powers and other actions aimed at provoking divisions in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church”, “are subject to the ecclesiastical court and defrocking.”
