Tag: Christianity

Cherkasy, Cherkasy Province, Ukraine, February 28, 2024

Photo: pravlife.org     

Another hierarch of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church is suffering from deteriorating health under the pressure of the state’s campaign of persecution.

“Due to the deterioration of his health caused by a hypertensive crisis, Metropolitan Theodosy of Cherkasy and Kanev was urgently hospitalized for inpatient treatment at the insistence of doctors,” the Diocese of Cherkasy reported on Tuesday, February 27.

Persecuted Metropolitan Longin undergoes another heart surgeryThough officially recognized as a Hero of Ukraine for having adopted hundreds of orphans, the state now considers him an enemy because he staunchly remains within the Orthodox Church.

“>His Eminence Metropolitan Longin of Bancheny has also suffered repeated severe health problems since the state began its persecution against him, as has Persecuted abbot of Kiev Caves Lavra undergoes emergency heart surgeryThe Metropolitan underwent surgery on his heart vessels and is currently under doctor supervision at the hospital.”>His Eminence Metropolitan Pavel of Vyshgorod, the abbot of the Kiev Caves Lavra, and Prayer request: persecuted Ukrainian bishop undergoes heart surgeryHis Eminence Metropolitan Jonathan of Tulchin and Bratslav, a hierarch of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church who has been subjected to searches and serious accusations by the Ukrainian Security Services (SBU) lately, underwent an emergency open-heart surgery today.”>His Eminence Metropolitan Jonathan of Tulchin.

Met. Theodosy initially suffered a hypertensive attack and attack of angina pectoris and had to receive treatment in the hospital on February 22, the day the Ukrainian Security Service decided to conduct another search of his home and to inform him of yet another investigation against him. There are now four separate charges being pursued against him, for supposedly inciting religious enmity and supporting Russia.

The canonical hierarch spent Persecuted Ukrainian hierarch returns to ministry after 8 months of round-the-clock house arrestAccording to today’s decision of the Cherkasy Court, Met. Theodosy now has a great deal more freedom, though he remains under nighttime house arrest.

“>eight months last year in round-the-clock house arrest, and is still under nighttime house arrest.

The Metropolitan is one of the most vocal UOC hierarchs in terms of fighting for the Church’s and its faithful’s human rights. He has addressed the Persecuted UOC hierarch addresses UN Human Rights CouncilThanks to his speech, Met. Theodosy received the status of a UN human rights defender, which allows the organization’s resources to be used for his protection.

“>UN’s Human Rights Council, and is among the founding members of the Hierarchs of Local Churches come together to form human rights groupThe press release on the creation of the association notes that UN representatives have repeatedly raised concerns about the violations of the rights of the UOC and its faithful.”>Church Against Xenophobia and Religious Discrimination human rights group.

The latest search of his home came just a day after he had an extensive meeting with the director of British Parliamentary Committee for International Religious Freedom, informing her about the widespread persecution of the Church, and with Robert Amsterdam, the D.C.-based lawyer who is representing the persecuted Church pro bono.

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Detroit, February 28, 2024

Photo: roea.org     

His Eminence Archbishop Nathaniel of the Orthodox Church in America’s Romanian Episcopate is recovering well after undergoing heart surgery earlier this month.

Abp. Nathaniel, 83, had his procedure on OCA’s Archbishop Nathaniel undergoes heart surgeryHis Grace Bishop Andrei will serve as Episcopate administrator until Abp. Nathaniel’s return.

“>February 15 and spent some initial recovery time in the ICU. He is now inpatient rehabilitation in the same hospital, reports his vicar, His Grace Bishop Andrei of Cleveland.

“According to his supervising physician, the recovery is going as planned with physical therapy and much-needed rest,” Bp. Andrei writes.

“His Eminence is in good spirits and is most grateful and happy to receive your well wishes and prayers! We thank you for your continuous prayers for our Archpastor!”

Cards and other correspondence can be sent to the Chancery of the Romanian Orthodox Episcopate of America:

PO Box 309
Grass Lake, MI 49240-0309

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Jean Swenson was an ambitious 28-year-old teacher working with at-risk youth in Minneapolis when her life changed forever.

As she drove a car full of teenagers in a drug rehab program back from an outing in 1980, she collided with a semitrailer.

Swenson’s body was thrown into the windshield, the force of which broke her neck. Looking down to see her blood dripping on the floor of the vehicle, she realized that she could not move.

“I kept saying to myself, ‘Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil, for you are with me,’” Swenson recalled of the painful minutes after the collision.

Swenson said she fell into a deep depression in the months after the accident. She found it difficult to accept that she would never play her piano again, cook for herself or go to the bathroom without assistance.

“I wanted to die. I thought my life was over,” Swenson recalled.

Fortunately, physician-assisted suicide was not an option for her, Swenson said in an interview with The Catholic Spirit, newspaper of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis. She is now very grateful to be alive.

But if legislation for people diagnosed with a terminal condition passes the Minnesota Legislature and opens the door to potential expansion to include those with disabilities, assisted suicide could one day be an option for people like her. Such legislation would be a tragedy, said Swenson, who is paralyzed from the neck down.

Canada, for example, now allows those with incurable illnesses or disabilities to take their lives. Some Canadian legislators have proposed including people with mental illness in assisted suicide programs.

“It doesn’t stop here, but it expands,” Swenson said.

The Minnesota Catholic Conference, which represents the public policy interests of the state’s bishops, said in a recent action alert that the proposed End-of-Life Option Act under consideration in the state House and Senate is “one of the most aggressive physician-assisted suicide bills in the country” and violates the teaching of the Catholic Church.

“As Catholics, we are called to uphold human dignity,” the conference wrote. “Legalization of assisted suicide works against this principle because death is hastened when it is thought that a person’s life no longer has meaning or purpose.”

Under the measure, to be eligible for physician-assisted suicide, one must be 18 or older, be diagnosed with a terminal illness and a prognosis of six months or less to live and be mentally capable of making an informed health care decision.

According to the Catholic conference, the measure has no mental health evaluation requirement; no provision for family notification; no safeguards for people with disabilities; and no nurse or doctor is present when the lethal drug is taken, because it is self-administered.

Committees in the Senate and the House must act favorably toward the bill by a March 22 deadline to keep the legislation in play. As of Feb. 27, no additional hearings had been scheduled.

Despite the opposition of pro-life leaders, many physicians, people with disabilities including Swenson and mental health experts, testimony and action taken by the House Health and Finance Policy Committee Jan. 25 appeared to signal that the legislation has momentum.

After a three-hour hearing, the committee passed the bill, which will have to clear other committees before a full vote on the House floor. The House Public Safety Committee, when it meets to discuss it, will decide if the bill will continue its trajectory toward becoming law.

James Hamilton, a resident of St. Paul, has implored legislators to enact the bill before his small-cell lung cancer advances to a stage that will suffocate him.

“Death need not be this ugly. Were the law to allow it, I would choose to end my life before this disease riddles my body and destroys my brain,” Hamilton wrote in testimony to the House. “The time and manner of my death should be mine to decide.”

Those who oppose the proposed legislation pointed to several concerning aspects of the bill.

The proposal would not require doctors to prescribe a lethal dose of a drug to patients who meet all criteria for it. However, the bill states that doctors who refuse to provide a prescription for the lethal dose are required to refer a patient to a doctor who will.

Dr. Robert Tibesar, a pediatrician and member of St. Agnes Parish in St. Paul, told The Catholic Spirit that he has been watching the proposed legislation and fears it would violate the conscience of ethical doctors.

“To say to someone, ‘Well I’m not going to harm you, but I’m going to send you to someone else who is going to harm you,’ still goes against our conscience. It still violates our covenant relationship with our patient,” said Tibesar, who is president emeritus of the Catholic Medical Association Twin Cities Guild.

Dr. Paul Post, a family medicine doctor who retired in 2019 after 37 years of practicing medicine in Chisago City, testified against the legislation at the hearing and said in an interview that referring patients to a doctor who will kill them is “just as serious” as prescribing the lethal dose.

“If you are making the referral, you are still involved in the act, so that doesn’t really take care of your freedom of conscience,” he said.

Tibesar and Post also expressed concern about a lack of sufficient mental health checks in the proposed legislation. The bill states that the physician who prescribes the medication is also the one who would refer the patient to a mental health specialist if he or she deems it necessary.

Tibesar suggested this system could allow biased and agenda-driven doctors to disregard signs of concern.

“It would not be a true evaluation of the patient’s mental health by an objective, unbiased medical expert in mental health,” said Tibesar. “It is just an … insincere effort to appease people who may have a concern.”

Dr. John Mielke, chief medical director at St. Paul-based Presbyterian Homes and Services with more than 40 years of experience caring for the elderly in Minnesota, said at a news conference held by the Minnesota Alliance for Ethical Healthcare before the House hearing that the legislation would “corrupt the physician’s ethics” by requiring the doctor to list on the death certificate the underlying diagnosis as the cause of death rather than assisted suicide.

Moreover, the bill would require doctors to determine a six-month-or-less prognosis for the patient to be eligible for assisted suicide. This prognosis, Mielke said, is virtually impossible to accurately determine. Patients outlive a six-month diagnosis in about 17% of cases, he said.

Paul Wojda, an associate professor of theology at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul who specializes in health care ethics and has been following the issue, said in an interview that if the bill passes into law, there is a risk that doctors who oppose physician-assisted suicide will be terminated from their positions, or not hired, or simply not admitted to medical school.

Unlike Oregeon’s assisted suicide law, which served as a model for the proposed Minnesota legislation, no data on the race, age, gender, or self-reported motives would be collected of those who die in Minnesota.

Disability rights activists say that regardless of how the legislation expands, the bill as currently proposed is already working against people who have disabilities.

Kathy Ware — whose son Kylen has quadriplegic cerebral palsy, epilepsy and autism — said the proposal invalidates the worth of the lives of those with disabilities. At the Jan. 25 House committee hearing, she advocated for greater resources and home health aides for the disabled, rather than making physician-assisted suicide an option for the terminally ill.

Bucharest, February 29, 2024

Photo: basilica.ro     

The Romanian Orthodox Church, through its dioceses, devoted more than $65 million to its multifaceted social-philanthropic mission last year.

The relevant data was presented at the National Church Council in Bucharest on Tuesday, February 27. The total amount reported, $65,575,250 (60,512,475 euros), does not include the expenses related to various charitable activities organized by parishes and monasteries, the Church report notes.

According to the report, the Church carried out its philanthropic and medical activity through 884 institutions and social services, with 1,254 ongoing projects and social programs.

The total of $65 million+ includes both financial and material aid, including support for refugees.

The beneficiaries of Church assistance included:

• 78,301 children from the Church’s social establishments, especially from poor families without support, or with parents working in other countries

• 7,380 people with disabilities, with speech, sight and hearing impairments, drug users or other types of addictions

• 74,568 elderly people from Church social protection settlements, from social transit centers and night shelters, the elderly who are alone, unable to move, abandoned by their families and who had serious health problems

• 53,836 unemployed, adults in difficulty, victims of human trafficking, victims of family violence, released prisoners, victims of natural disasters

• 1,309 homeless people

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ROME – A prominent progressive supporter of Pope Francis has suggested changes to the rules governing conclaves to slow down the election of the next pope, in order to guard against the possibility that well-timed leaks or other forms of interference, perhaps related to charges of sexual abuse, might influence the outcome.

Specifically, veteran Italian Church historian Alberto Melloni has proposed that there be only one ballot each day the cardinals are gathered in the Sistine Chapel to select a new pope, followed by a day of pause for conversation and reflection.

Melloni also called for the eventual acceptance of the election result to be slowed down as well, giving a candidate who receives more than two-thirds of the vote, and thus who’s elected as pope, a full night to consider and to consult before making a final decision.

Under such a system, Melloni noted, the conclave of 2005, which required just four ballots and roughly 24 hours to elect Pope Benedict XVI, would have lasted ten full days instead.

Melloni is best-known as a key figure in the “Bologna School” associated with the late historian Giuseppe Alberigo, which produced a multi-volume history of Vatican II (1962-65) that popularized a progressive reading of the council.

His essay on the conclave appeared Feb. 26 as part of the online edition of Il Mulino (“The Mill”), a popular Italian journal of culture and politics.

In effect, Melloni argues that current events, including the Russian war in Ukraine and the Israeli/Hamas conflict in Gaza, offer reminders that there are forces on the world stage seeking some form of either regional or global hegemony – and that the Catholic Church, as he puts it, is a “natural antagonist and objective obstacle” to such ambitions.

For all its faults, Melloni argues, the Catholic Church is a uniquely unarmed but nevertheless powerful global institution, which various states and non-state actors might wish to influence or subvert.

In that context, Melloni says, the clerical sexual abuse scandals have created “a button with which anyone can ostracize anyone else, leaving it to history to sort out justified accusations from the unjustified, and to God to compensate the innocent and punish the guilty.”

For that reason, Melloni suggests, the next conclave “will have to protect the elected person from the risk of being delegitimized by an accusation designed to divide cardinals who challenge the election of an unworthy person from those who instead consider the election valid, at least for the presumption of innocence.”

Historically, Melloni argues, the function of a conclave has not been to ensure that the holiest or most qualified person is elected pope, but simply to guarantee that the outcome would be considered legitimate and the authority of the new pope accepted.

In an age of artificial intelligence, social media and mass computing power, Melloni writes, that function faces new threats related to the capacity to circulate damaging accusations against public figures on a mass scale and in real time.

Doing so with regard to the abuse scandals, Melloni says, is merely a question of “will and means,” both of which “can arise within states, or in those large companies that act like superpowers of computing and which can place their megalomaniac servility at the service of occult powers, as we’ve already seen in various public affairs.”

To remain compactly behind the newly elected pope even in the teeth of such an attack, Melloni writes, will require a compact and united College of Cardinals truly certain of its choice, for which more time may be required.

Lengthening the conclave, he argues, “would guarantee time for conversation and discussion within the college, which is more necessary than ever to reach a more shared electoral process and to allow candidates time to withdraw, in the well-founded expectation that someone could use true or even plausible information against them.”

A slower process, Melloni says, would also counteract “the media tendency to paint a conclave with the colors of an American primary, made up of tricks, money and ideological maneuvers.”

Moreover, Melloni also says that the custom of holding two ballots back-to-back inside the conclave was designed to replace the older custom of “accession,” in which a cardinal could change his vote after a ballot in which no one received a two-thirds majority. The system was cumbersome and also compromised the secrecy of the first vote, since ballots had to be checked to ensure that a cardinal wasn’t voting for the same candidate twice. The option was suppressed in 1903.

As to whether Pope Francis might adopt such a reform, Melloni says “probably yes,” despite voicing concern that the advisors on Church law to whom the pontiff might entrust such a project lack both the “ecclesiological talent” and “legal virtuosity” of earlier generations of canonists.

Nonetheless, Melloni argues, a reform is necessary to avoid the risk that “warring nations and the great players in the media market” might subvert the conclave, provoking a “fatal impasse in the unity of the Church.”

Chelyabinsk, Chelyabinsk Province, Russia, February 29, 2024

Photo: vk.com     

The Hodigitria Convent in Chelyabinsk, Russia, recently received back a precious item from its history.

The pectoral cross of the pre-revolutionary Abbess Anastasia (Schapova) was returned to the monastery by the chairman of the national Warriors of the Spirit awards Akhapkin Konstantin Viktorovich, who had purchased it at an antique shop in Moscow in 2005, the monastery reports.

The cross bears the inscription: “To the venerable Mother Abbess Anastasia from the grateful nuns and sisters of the Hodigitria Monastery. 1916.”

Photo: vk.com The monastery writes:

This pectoral abbess’ cross testifies to the mutual spiritual love of the abbess and the nuns and to the truly monastic arrangement of our convent before the revolution. In building a monastic family, Abbess Anastasia, through daily efforts and care, looked after the needs of the monastery and sisters, carrying them in her heart. And the sisters, in response to such sacrificial love of the Mother Superior, showed sincere gratitude not only through obedience but also by presenting a gilded and decorated cross.

It was with this cross that she would pass through all the sorrowful trials that fell to her lot, associated with imprisonment, expulsion of the inhabitants from her native monastery and the subsequent complete destruction of the monastery.

For us, receiving the abbess’ cross from a century ago is a sign of God’s blessing, spiritual continuity and the invisible connection between the pre-revolutionary monastery and the revived monastery.

The nuns of the monastery, led by Abbess Anastasia, were arrested in 1921 and sent to a gulag in Chelyabsink for six months. After their release, Mother Anastasia lived in an apartment in Chelyabinsk. Exact information about her future fate is unknown, though according to some of the sisters, she reposed in the early 1930s.

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Pope Francis’ calendar for Holy Week and Easter is just as full as in previous years despite a mild illness which has caused him to cancel meetings in the days leading up to the release of his liturgical calendar for March.

The pope canceled meetings Feb. 24 and Feb. 26 due to “flu-like symptoms,” the Vatican said. Although he held his general audience Feb. 28, an aide read Pope Francis’ prepared remarks, and the Vatican said he briefly visited a Rome hospital after the audience for medical tests.

The pope is scheduled preside over all the major liturgical celebrations of Holy Week.

As is customary when first publishing the pope’s calendar for Holy Week, the Vatican did not provide the time or place for his celebration of the Mass of the Lord’s Supper on Holy Thursday, March 28. Pope Francis has made it a tradition to celebrate the Mass and foot-washing ritual at a prison or detention center, refugee center or rehabilitation facility; last year he did so at a prison for minors in Rome.

Here is the schedule of papal liturgical ceremonies and events for March released by the Vatican Feb. 29:

— March 24, Palm Sunday, morning Mass in St. Peter’s Square.

— March 28, Holy Thursday, morning chrism Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica.

— March 29, Good Friday, afternoon liturgy of the Lord’s passion in St. Peter’s Basilica.

— March 29, Way of the Cross at night at Rome’s Colosseum.

— March 30, Easter vigil Mass in the evening in St. Peter’s Basilica.

— March 31, Easter morning Mass in St. Peter’s Square, followed at noon by the pope’s blessing “urbi et orbi” (to the city and the world).

Athens, February 29, 2024

Photo: orthodoxianewsagency.gr     

The Metropolitan of Zambia has been released from the hospital after a 10-day stay for treatment of malaria.

On February 17, the Metropolis reported that Metropolitan Ioannis was being treated in the ICU at Eugenides Hospital in Athens, which caused him to miss the meeting of the Holy Synod of the Patriarchate of Alexandria.

Later that day, the Metropolis published the following message from an Archdeacon Prodromos:

For some of us who suffered the experience of MALARIA +++ untreated for a very long time in our continent Africa, the patient’s FEVER can rise to more or less 35%, the body trembles and is completely weakened, the dizziness, malaise and vomiting may be common. This condition makes the patients weak and vulnerable, and all they need is tranquility and submission to doctors’ directives.

This is why in the case which concerns Our Shepherd and Spiritual Father, His Eminence Archbishop IOANNIS, sick and untreated for around 30 years, with love and solidarity, we humbly ask all our brothers and sisters to pray for him and to be patient from contacting him temporarily to allow him recover effectively following the advice of his doctors!

And yesterday, February 28, the Metropolis reported that Met. Ioannis has been discharged. The hierarch expressed thanks to all the doctors and medical staff who helped him and all those who prayed for him.

“These words from the Gospel define the appropriate attitude,” Met. Ioannis said, “Fear not: believe only (Lk. 8:50).

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After President Javier Milei’s administration decided to cut funds for public works in poor neighborhoods and slums in Argentina, dozens of priests released a letter protesting the measure.

A decree promulgated by Milei on February 23 radically reduced the share of a tax collected on the purchase of foreign currency that is directed to integrate the slums into the cities. Until then, nine percent of such funds should be used in poor neighborhoods. Now, that portion corresponds to only 0.3 percent.

A significant part of such money used to be transferred to co-ops that employ mostly local slum residents and were hired by the government for sewerage, public lighting, and pavement works.

Such co-ops are connected to popular movements, which largely rejected Milei during the presidential campaign last year. His administration suspected there were irregularities in the use of the funds and investigated it, but no evidence of corruption was found.

According to the Spanish-language news website InfoBae, since the creation of the program in 2019, almost 1,300 construction works have been carried out.

The public letter was released by the so-called curas villeros (slum priests in Spanish), an ecclesial ministry developed during the 1960s and 1970s by missionaries who live and work in Argentina’s poorest neighborhoods. The document was also signed by the clergy members in charge of the Church program Hogares de Cristo (homes of Christ), which gives support to drug addicts.

The priests begin the text by saying that “one of the main functions of the State is to look after the most disadvantaged,” an idea that directly opposes Milei’s ultra-libertarian ideology and his intention of reducing the State’s participation in the South American country’s economy and society.

The declaration then recalled that “the slums did not appear on the maps” in the past, and only after a few decades the Argentinian society understood that it needed to deal with them.

“People talked about their eradication, then urbanization, till the concept of urban integration was quite established. With comings and goings, steps were taken in this direction,” the letter read.

The priests emphasized that policies were gradually established to improve the slums’ conditions, giving to many of their residents better access to sanitation, water, electricity, schools, and community centers.

“Others were able to expand and improve their humble homes. It is not good to disconnect the State from the slums and settlements. Reducing the funds that benefit more than 5 million residents, most of them minors, is a very hard blow,” the priests continued.

The document concluded by saying that the program is one of the few that focus on the hardest core of poverty in Argentina. The priests ask the national government to “check what is necessary so that socio-urban integration is an increasingly effective reality.”

According to Father Lorenzo de Vedia, known as Padre Toto, a missionary in one of the largest slums in Buenos Aires, the funds that have been cut were “fundamental for the integration of slums and settlements into the urban environment.”

“That money was used to improve several aspects in the lives of the residents of such districts,” he told Crux.

Father Pablo Viola, a vicar in a poor neighborhood in Córdoba, emphasized that those funds “generated work for slum residents and helped those people to progress.”

“Cutting that money means to block the prosperity of many people. There are 5 million slum residents all over Argentina, and part of them counted on that program,” he told Crux.

Viola recalled that Milei’s administration has been reducing other social relief actions, something that has been affecting not only the poor but also the middle classes.

“We think that reducing the funds for civic organizations which assist the poor is a mistake connected to an inability to understand the reality in Argentina. That increases the malaise we have been experiencing,” he said.

Viola described that it’s already noticeable how Milei’s policies have impacted poor neighborhoods in Córdoba, “zones where some progress was possible in the past and which are now stagnating again.”

Padre Toto affirmed that after the letter was released the government branch in charge of the program accepted to receive them for a meeting.

In Viola’s opinion, the government should listen to civic organizations and the Church in order to better understand Argentina’s social problems.

“It’s fundamental that this administration comprehends the importance those funds have,” he said.

Sumy, Sumy Province, Ukraine, February 29, 2024

Photo: news.church.ua     

Ukrainian law enforcement authorities are investigating yet another hierarch of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

His Eminence Metropolitan Evlogy of Sumy received an official notice of suspicion for “inciting religious hatred” on February 20, he reported to the Union of Orthodox Journalists.

The investigation is based on statements he made in October about how a number of Local Churches, including the Polish and Albanian Churches, do not recognize the so-called “Orthodox Church of Ukraine.”

Officers from the National Police and the Ukrainian Security Service pressured him to sign a document admitting his guilt, but the hierarch refused, because he is innocent of inciting enmity.

“But they have already made it clear that it’ll be bad for me if I don’t sign,” the Metropolitan said.

He also issued a statement to the faithful of his diocese:

With deep pain in my heart, but firm faith in the righteous judgment of God, I address you in these difficult times for me. As you know, accusations have been made against me, which have no real basis. The reason for these accusations was my sermon in which I expressed support for our Ukrainian Orthodox Church and the erroneousness of the religious policy against our Church and its faithful children, which we all observe (see the video “Metropolitan Evlogy’s Appeal of 10/21/2023 About the Persecution of the UOC” on the YouTube channel Orthodox Sumy). Today, when false slanders pour out like a river, and with each day the number of threats grows and the situation intensifies, my soul and heart turn to God, seeking consolation and strength in Him. My episcopal conscience does not allow me to succumb to these attacks and admit guilt for actions I did not commit. I believe that God’s truth will prevail, but for this, I need your support and prayerful help.

I ask you, dear fathers, brothers, and sisters, to intensify your holy prayers to our Lord God, that He may strengthen my faith, fortitude of spirit, and grant wisdom not to make mistakes in this trial. May the Lord help me to maintain the purity of my conscience and continue serving before the throne of God impeccably and in righteousness, as He expects from us.

May the Merciful Lord bless you, your families, and your service. May He grant us all peace, patience, and strength to withstand the trials, keeping faith and love in our hearts.

Ukraine has already charged or is investigating a number of hierarchs on trumped-up charges of inciting religious enmity and supposedly supporting Russian aggression against Ukraine.

However, the latter charge would be especially hard to bring in the case of Met. Evlogy. Sumy, which is in far eastern Ukraine, just 35 miles from the Russian border, was one of the first regions to feel the effects when the war began in February 2022, and the A number of Ukrainian dioceses call for question of autocephaly to be raisedRecall that especially in western Ukrainian dioceses, where the OCU and Uniate churches are more numerous than the UOC and Ukrainian nationalism is stronger and more violent, clergy are under great pressure to separate themselves from the Moscow Patriarchate.

“>Sumy Diocese was the first to stop commemorating His Holiness Patriarch Kirill in the Divine services.

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