RPTs: WORDS OF HEAD OF UKRAINIAN UNIATES INSULT MILLIONS OF ORTHODOX
Statements by the archbishop of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (Ukrainskaia Greko-Katolicheskaia Tserkov—UGKTs), Sviatoslav Shevchuk, uttered in an interview with an Austrian news agency, hinder Orthodox-Catholic dialogue and are aimed at inflaming inter-ethnic and interconfessional hatred, the Department of External Church Relations [Otdel Vneshnikh Tserkovnykh Sviazei—OVTsS] of the Moscow patriarchate said in a statement.
In an interview with the news agency Kathpress, the head of the UGKTs accused the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UPTs) of "generalization from the sufferings of the Ukrainian people" and he made a number of sharp statements against the primate of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill.
"The Ukrainian Orthodox Church fully shares the pain and sufferings of its flock on the whole territory of Ukraine and it realizes its obligation to help the unfortunate, those who lost their homes and the most elementary conditions for life, and those who lost loved ones or received severe injuries, and it is not important whether they are on one or another side of the political conflict," the statement of OVTsS says.
The RPTs emphasized that Orthodox and Catholics are making special efforts for engaging in dialogue, and the statements by the head of UGKTs introduce "unfortunate dissonance into this joint search," aimed at "overcoming misunderstandings and disagreements that have been accumulated over centuries." "The Unia in Ukraine has again declared itself as a sad remnant of that past, when Catholics and Orthodox perceived one another not as allies but as competitors," the synodal department notes.
The statement by the head of UGKTs to the effect that "the Russian Orthodox Church is occupied only with the pains and joys of the Russian people" was called by the RPTs "false and insulting." The Russian church "unites believers of Russia, Ukraine, Belorussia, Moldavia, five states of Central Asia, three Baltic states, Japan, China, and the multimillion and multi-linguistic diaspora on all continents," the Department of External Church Relations recalls.
"We consider the continuation of the inter-church dialogue to be very important, which is necessary for restoring peace on the long-suffering Ukrainian land," the OVTsS emphasized, but "success in this work is possible only under conditions of the termination of any rhetoric aimed at inflaming inter-ethnic and interconfessional hatred." (tr. by PDS, posted 24 October 2015)
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