KDAiS rector: In XXI century Phanar treats Ukrainians like serfs

Bishop Sylvester (Stoychev) of Belogorodka. Photo: screenshot/YouTube/NewsOne

The whole rhetoric about human freedom and democracy disappeared somewhere when the Patriarch of Constantinople suddenly decided that he could treat Orthodox Ukrainians like serfs. Bishop Sylvester (Stoychev) of Belogorodka, vicar of the Kyiv Metropolis, rector of the Kyiv Theological Academy and Seminary, spoke about it on the NewsOne TV channel on the occasion of celebration of the Baptism of Rus.

Commenting on the situation in 2018, when Constantinople revoked the act of 1686 on the transfer of the Kyiv Metropolis, the hierarch of the UOC noted that "the Church is, first of all, people, but in fact, no one asked these people."

“The issue was not studied, it was recalled at a certain political point, and this card was played,” he noted. “Constantinople did not bother about having any serious consultations with World Orthodoxy or with the Ukrainian Orthodox Church under the leadership of Metropolitan Onuphry, or with theologians from other Local Churche – nothing was done. The attitude was like to serfs – the landlord remembered giving part of his flock 300 years ago for some preferences, and now he decided to go back on this decision."

But we are not serfs, Bishop Sylvester emphasized, and we live in the XXI century.

“We are people who live and freely choose what our faith and our tradition should be. For 300 years we have existed without any involvement of Constantinople, yet out of the blue, Constantinople announces that it has changed its mind in its half-a-page communique. This is the XXI century, and all sorts of narratives about human freedoms, about freedom of choice, ultimately, about democracy – where did it all vanish when the Patriarch of Constantinople suddenly decided that he had to change his mind and so Ukraine and Orthodox Ukrainians are his serfs only because he decided so personally? What if in 150 years, "Bartholomew the Second” should appear and act differently?" summed up the rector of the Kyiv Theological Academy and Seminary.

We will remind that earlier the rector of KDAiS told why formal membership in the Church is dangerous.

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