The Ukrainian community in Portugal opposes providing material assistance by the country’s Catholic bishops to the Moscow Patriarchate Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC – MP), whose representatives recently visited Portugal.

In an open letter to the president of the local diocese, Bishop José Ornelasa Carvalho, chairman of the association, Paweł Sadocha, pointed out that the UOC – MP, despite its name, is an “integral part” of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC), which supports Russia’s aggression against Ukraine.

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An indispensable part of the politics of the “world of Ruthenia”

At the beginning of the document, the Ukrainian community thanks the Catholic Church in Portugal for helping the Ukrainian people from the first days of the “Russian armed invasion of sovereign Ukraine”. Recall that the Russian aggressor has been preparing for this war for years, also on an ideological level, adding that the Russian authorities currently do not recognize Ukraine as an independent country, its history, culture and religion.

An important factor in ideological preparation for military aggression was the blessing of the ROC led by Patriarch Cyril by the Russian army that invaded Ukraine. P. Sadocha notes that even before the declaration of independence, in 1990 the authorities of the then Ukrainian Soviet Republic registered members of the UOC parliament as legal entities (…), which, although officially called “Ukraine”, were an integral part of the ROC, and because it’s the policy of the “Ruthenian world”.

There is a separate decision of the Supreme Council of Ukraine, recognizing the UOC-MP as a religion whose center is located on the territory of the aggressor state, namely in the Russian Federation, and members of this Church are subject to martial law restrictions . This is mainly about the prohibition of the UOC – MP clergy from performing clerical duties in the Ukrainian Armed Forces and other power structures.

“hybrid” propaganda

The author of the letter recalls that so far the Ukrainian Security Service has initiated 33 cases against priests and bishops of UOC – MP and the bishop of this Church, Jonathan (Jełecki), has been arrested. In areas occupied by Russia, all UOC-MP clergy cooperate with looters, and two of its bishops have fled to Russia from lands liberated by the Ukrainian army.

P. Sadocha then emphasized that the bishops of the UOC – MP visiting EU countries, including Metropolitan Meletius, who led the delegation living in Portugal, were tasked with creating “hybrid” propaganda among Ukrainian refugees, gathering news about countries NATO and other materials, of interest to the Russian Federation. The affirmation of these words is – according to the Open Letter – the presence in the delegation of the ROC priest, Fr. Vladimir Piskunov, known in Portugal for his membership of the Coordination Council of Russian Compatriots, which operates in the Russian embassy in the country.

The current head of the delegation of the UOC MP, Metropolitan Meletius (Jehorenko) has his seat in Chernihiv, world Orthodoxy does not recognize his status in Ukraine and, from an Orthodox point of view, he is “self-proclaimed” – stated in the letter. He graduated from the Moscow Theological Seminary (1986) and in 1996 a Ukrainian citizen he graduated from the Moscow Theological Academy. In 1987, with the knowledge of the then Soviet KGB, he was sent to Pochaev Lavra in Western Ukraine to disrupt the country’s nascent autocephaly movement and work for the Soviet secret service. During Viktor Yanukovych’s presidency, he distinguished himself by promoting the “Ruthenian world” in Ukraine, where Cyril Gundyayev gave him the Order of Sergius of Radonezh.

Metropolitan Meletius is a Russian agent?

Currently, Meletius is the head of the “Russian FSB church agency center in Ukraine, the so-called PM UOC External Church Contacts Department” – reads the letter. It said the ROC was traditionally “the homeland of the secret service, used to work in European countries”. Therefore Meletius is the head of “the intelligence service of the church of the Russian Federation in Ukraine”, he never condemned Russia’s aggression against his country neither in 2014 nor in 2022. “He is completely devoted to the anti-human ideology of the” Ruthenian world “, the document says Ukrainian diaspora.

He acknowledged that the reception of the UOC-MP Bishops by representatives of the Catholic Church in Portugal was an “act of welcoming with open arms” aimed at helping and minimizing the suffering of the Ukrainian nation. At the same time, it underscores the “moral and civic responsibility of the diaspora to inform the Bishops’ Conference and the Portuguese community that unfortunately the name “Ukraine” does not automatically mean pro-Ukrainian content and is often used by special programs of the Russian government to cover up their intrusive purposes. to Ukraine. And just as the Christian and Christian Churches defend life, human values, equality and freedom, sadly the Russian Orthodox Church defends dictatorship, aggression and death, says the Open Letter.

“As Ukrainians and integrated Christians, who are also part of the Portuguese community, we have an obligation to inform and warn against a serious situation when the Moscow government, through the ROC, tries to twist the truth about this very unfair war” – concluded P. Sadoch .