Expert: The biggest barrier to "transitions" to OCU is reluctance of people

Yuri Reshetnikov. Photo: tsn.ua

The biggest obstacle to "transitions" to the OCU is the reluctance of believers who are not willing to betray their Church. Yuri Reshetnikov, PhD and Chairman of the State Committee for Nationalities and Religions in 2009-2010, said this in a comment for the UOJ.

He stated that the meeting of US Secretary of State Antony Blinken with Epiphany Dumenko, which took place in Kyiv today, is not the first contact of American officials with the head of the OCU, and, “unfortunately, this can only reinforce those opinions and assumptions that this church came out as a product of a certain geopolitical project, in particular, upon the initiative of the United States of America."

“As for talk about artificial obstacles by the transition of the UOC communities to the OCU, the biggest obstacle is the unwillingness of the believers of these communities themselves, the believers of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, to betray their Church and move to some other, in this case, to the OCU,” the expert stressed, commenting on the information that Epiphany and Blinken discussed "the importance of removing artificial obstacles in the determination by communities of their religious identity."

According to Yuriy Reshetnikov, those who, the issue of artificial obstacles is raised “for some unknown reason by those who hoped that the granting of the Tomos, the formation of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine would make all communities of the UOC or a significant majority want to become part of this newly formed formation."

This did not happen, he stated, but "those who would like to see the OCU not only on paper but actually as the largest in Ukraine tend to believe that there are some artificial obstacles, someone is putting up roadblocks for them."

We will remind, earlier Ruslan Bortnik, Director of the "Ukrainian Institute of Politics" explained why the OCU is discussing the problem of "transitions" of religious communities with the US Secretary of State.

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