UOC spokesperson: UOC looks at believers, not Europе, on issue of calendar

Протоиерей Николай Данилевич. Фото: apostrophe.ua

The spokesperson for the UOC, Archpriest Nikolai Danilevich, said that the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, in terms of the date of the celebration of Christmas, is oriented not towards Europe, but towards believers. The priest spoke about this in an interview with the "PavlovskyNews" Telegram channel.

Archpriest Nikolai Danilevich emphasized that "the fullness of the Church - bishops, clerics and believers – are not ready for this, and now there is no need to do this".

The priest believes that there is no dogmatic reason to celebrate in the "new" or "old" style. But at the same time, according to him, “we see that in some Local Orthodox Churches – Bulgarian, Greek and especially Romanian, due to the transition to a new style, ‘old calendar schisms’ have arisen. That is, divisions arose within the Church."

Archpriest Nikolai is sure that "when making any decision in the Church, one must take into account the internal church context so that there are no such divisions".

“The fact is that when the state makes a decision, it concerns all citizens of Ukraine. The Church, however, makes a decision focusing on its parishioners, and not on all citizens of Ukraine because not all citizens of Ukraine are members of the Church,” the priest said.

According to Archpriest Nikolai, the Church "should make decisions not focusing on absolutely all citizens of Ukraine, on Western Europe or other factors, but focusing only on those citizens of the country who are members of our Church".

Earlier, the UOJ wrote that the Uniates of Chernivtsi will celebrate Christmas on December 25 to break away from Russia.

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