Ukraine has a new church, but some parishes remain loyal to the Moscow patriarch – and this sometimes causes tensions.
Officially the Orthodox Church of Ukraine is now fully independent of Moscow, but many parishes remain loyal to the Russian patriarch – leading in some cases to local tensions. The BBC’s Nick Sturdee witnessed this in a town in the nationalist west of the country.
The sun is streaming through the lofty windows of the Church of the Holy Trinity in Bohorodchany. The divine floodlight illuminates icons and families before them, and the tear-like streaks of condensation on the frescoes thought miraculous by those who attend here. The congregation chants, many brandishing their candles as though ready for battle.
Father Volodymyr faces them all, bearded, crucifix clasped in both hands. Today’s sermon is on the persecution of Orthodox saints through the ages, and moves inexorably and seamlessly to the present – in fact, to the events in this very church just a few days earlier. « There were 40 of them. They broke down the doors, » he announces. « They forced us to the ground. They hit our sexton on the head. They called us KGB agents and said we should switch church. Change our confession. All in a very nice, democratic way – of course. »
This is the story according to Father Volodymyr – a Russia-trained priest of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church – of how a delegation from the town council, with a supporting cast of local political « activists », had come to the church to execute an order ejecting him and his family from rooms they had occupied for some 20 years.
Across Ukraine, congregations and priests are switching, voluntarily or otherwise, from Father Volodymyr’s branch of the church, known as the Moscow Patriarchate – dominant here since the collapse of the Soviet Union, headed by priests approved by the increasingly politicised Russian Orthodox Church – to a newly recognised Kiev Patriarchate.
