Divided land, divided church Protests in Ukraine have highlighted the division b

http://www.dw.de/ukraine-divided-land-divided-church/a-17296538Ukraine: Divided land, divided church

http://www.dw.de/ukraine-divided-land-divided-church/a-17296538

Protests in Ukraine have highlighted the division between the country’s two main Orthodox churches. One has an independent streak and is protecting demonstrators from police. The other is subordinate to Moscow. …

In the early hours of November 30, dramatic scenes played out before the monastery gates. A few hundred meters downhill, on the Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square), special police forces violently cleared a camp set up by opponents of the government. Hundreds of students were brutally beaten and chased into the surrounding streets. They found refuge at the monastery. Priests blocked the path of the baton-wielding police officers and did not let them through. …

The monastery’s opposition role does not appear to be a coincidence. It was destroyed during the Soviet era and rebuilt in the 1990s. It belongs to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyiv Patriarchate. That church was founded after the independence of Ukraine and considers itself independent. But the Russian Orthodox Church has blocked it from gaining recognition as a part of the global Orthodoxy. The move was political, said Kyiv Patriarchate spokesman Archbishop Yevstratiy. “Russia wants to use the church to retain its influence over Ukraine.”

Moscow’s schism

Most believers in Ukraine belong to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate. It has its headquarters in the famous Kyiv Pechersk Lavra monastery on the steep right bank of the Dniper River. This church is subordinate to the Russian Patriarch. …

The two-decade-long division in Ukrainian Orthodoxy is reflected in the attitude toward the current events. Where the Kyiv Patriarchate granted demonstrators protection from the police, its priests praying alongside hundreds of thousands of protesters on the Maidan, the Moscow-oriented Patriarchate is behaving differently.

“Our priests may indeed go to the demonstrations, but only as citizens, and not as churchmen,” spokesman Grigori Kovalenko told DW. He denied, however, that this was due to instructions from Russia. “There is no influence on us from Moscow,” he said.