UGCC service in St Sophia to be decided at meeting between OCU-UGCC heads

St. Sophia Cathedral in Kiev

At present, the final decision regarding the format of the Uniates liturgy in the St. Sophia Cathedral on April 7, 2019, has not been made, the UGCC Information Department reports, commenting on Filaret’s call to abolish the liturgy.

The department explained that the UGCC is guided by the norms of national legislation and "respects the feelings of our Orthodox brothers".

In order to discuss the issue, it is planned to hold a meeting between the heads of the UGCC and the OCU, which will take place after the return of the UGCC head Svyatoslav Shevchuk to Ukraine.

Until that time, representatives of the UGCC refuse to comment on the situation.

We recall that it was not the head of the OCU but “His Holiness Patriarch of Kiev and All Rus-Ukraine” Filaret expressed concern about the planned worship service of the UGCC in the “centre of Ukrainian Orthodoxy”. Filaret asked the head of the UGCC Svyatoslav Shevchuk to abandon the idea to perform a liturgy in the St. Sophia Cathedral announced for Annunciation on April 7, 2019, since “it’s like if someone from the Orthodox Primates performed the Divine Liturgy in the St. Apostle Peter Cathedral of in Rome”.

After that, on February 23, 2019, a message was published on the official website of the Ministry of Culture, stating that the Ministry of Culture did not provide permission to conduct the service of the UGCC in the St. Sophia Cathedral. However, the message was soon removed from the ministry’s website.

As the UOJ reported, the Minister of Culture Yevgeny Nishchuk, who himself is a parishioner of the UGCC, permitted the Uniates to hold the liturgy in the St. Sophia Cathedral on the Annunciation Day.

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