The author with the Ukrainian Orthodox priest, Hudson, New York, Easter 2022

Could be major!

Neil MacFarquhar, former Moscow correspondent and 2017 Pulitzer Prize winning reporter for The New York Times reports on May 28:

Ukrainian Orthodox Church Breaks With Moscow Over War

Excerpt:

The leaders of the central branch of the Orthodox church in Ukraine have made a formal break with the hierarchy in Moscow, widening the schism in a church that was already divided before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The Council of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church said that it disagreed with the position that Patriarch Kirill I, the leader of the Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church, had taken on the war, according to a statement posted on the council’s Facebook page on Friday.

…

Until now, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church had formally maintained its allegiance to Moscow.

The church has been under the wing of the Moscow Patriarchate for centuries, and its departure will markedly decrease the size of the patriarch’s flock because Ukrainians attend church in greater numbers than Russians.

…

Before the announcement on Friday, about half the 45 dioceses of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church had already stopped mentioning Patriarch Kirill in their prayer services, the first step toward a formal rupture. Hundreds of Orthodox priests in Ukraine recently signed an open letter demanding that Patriarch Kirill face a religious tribunal over the war.

The Times properly notes recalcitrance on the part of some Ukrainian Orthodox figures to embrace this schism.  More reason for the spiritual justice warriors who follow UkrainianGlory.org to make their voices heard in their own spiritual, political and social communities to raise their voices to leadership demanding, in one voice, that the Russian Orthodox church condemn Putin’s brutal assault on Ukraine as spiritually and morally anathema.

Glory to Ukraine!

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