UOC is facing genocide today, says Cherkasy hierarch

Metropolitan Theodosiy of Cherkasy and Kaniv. Photo: romfea.gr

Metropolitan Theodosiy of Cherkasy gave an interview to the Greek news agency Romfea in which he said that the Ukrainian Orthodox Church is being subjected to a systematic genocide.

The UOC hierarch stressed that the actions against the country’s largest religious community fully meet the Rome Statute’s definition of genocide. Article 6 of the statute, to which Ukraine is a party, defines genocide as acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a religious group. Such acts include killing members of the group, causing them serious bodily harm, and deliberately inflicting conditions of life intended to bring about the group’s physical destruction.

The Cherkasy hierarch recalled incidents of severe physical violence against clergy and faithful. In particular, during the forcible seizure of the cathedral in Cherkasy, radicals struck the bishop on the head with a club, leaving him with a concussion and spinal injury. The attackers also knocked out six teeth of an Orthodox priest and fired traumatic weapons at worshippers inside the church.

At the Sviatohirsk Lavra, attackers wearing military gear shot and killed Monk Varsonofiy and seriously wounded two other monastery residents with knives. According to Metropolitan Theodosiy, these crimes point to an attempt to completely destroy the UOC. “What is taking place in Ukraine today is nothing less than a genuine genocide of millions of believers of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Anyone in Ukraine who fails to see this must be blind,” the hierarch stressed.

The bishop also criticized the Ukrainian leadership’s record on human rights. He cited the Ukrainian president’s statement that citizens’ constitutional rights can be “put on pause” during wartime. “Who gave officials the right to use this as grounds for committing genocide against millions of Orthodox Christians remains a deeply troubling question,” the UOC hierarch said.

For several years, Metropolitan Theodosiy has presented the position of the persecuted Church at the United Nations at the invitation of human rights advocates. UN special rapporteurs issued a press release describing the Ukrainian authorities’ actions as “collective punishment” of believers. UN experts acknowledged the criminal prosecution of Orthodox hierarchs, but Kyiv has ignored these international legal findings and continues to exert pressure through the court system.

Earlier, the UOJ reported that Metropolitan Theodosiy had spoken at the UN about religious genocide in Ukraine.

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