Patriarch Kirill: Met. Jonathan sentenced for calls for the unity of Rus

Patriarch Kirill. Photo: Moscow Patriarchate

The Primate of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, made a statement regarding the decision of the Vinnytsia court to sentence Metropolitan Jonathan of Tulchyn to a 5-year imprisonment. The statement was published on the website of the Moscow Patriarchate.

According to Patriarch Kirill, the UOC bishop was sentenced for calling for the spiritual unity of Holy Rus, praying for peace and condemning the unrighteousness of schism.

He said that he personally knows Metropolitan Jonathan "from the years of his studies and labours at the Leningrad Theological Academy", and "back in the late 1980s the state security agencies of the atheist state unsuccessfully tried to intimidate him".

The head of the Russian Orthodox Church called the accusations against the Tulchin bishop "absolutely null and void" and the evidence "falsified".

Patriarch Kirill once again calls on the international community, religious and political leaders and human rights organisations "to pay attention to the purposeful policy of the Ukrainian authorities aimed at destroying the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, the ongoing unpunished persecution of its hierarchs and clerics, monastics and laypeople".

As earlier reported, Metropolitan Jonathan was sentenced to five years in prison.

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