Metropolitan Augustine (Markevich): attempts to involve interfaith problems into the sphere of military influence are unacceptable

Chairman of the UOC Synodal Department for Interaction with Armed Forces and Other Military Units of Ukraine Metropolitan of Bila Tserkva and Boguslav Augustine told about planned provocations among the AFU militaries with a view o discrediting the UOC priests and deprive them of the possibility to conduct their pastoral guidance of Ukrainian soldiers. It is reported by the Information and Education Department of the UOC.

In his address on September 7 to the military clergy and Orthodox militaries of the Armed Forces and other military units of Ukraine Met. Augustine emphasized that attempts to involve interfaith problems into the sphere of military influence are inadmissible.

Vladyka noted that assaultsof a certain part of negatively and aggressively minded citizens toward the Ukrainian Orthodox Church have been frequented lately. In the nearest time, according to the Metropolitan, a cycle of provocations against the UOC is going to be organized.

“For that end there is planned publishing of disgraceful provocative materials with false content, destined to defame the UOC military clergy and chiefs of the Synodal Department, remarked His Eminence. The purpose of the intentional provocation is to raise an issue of excluding the UOC representatives from the Pastoral Care Council at the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine.”

It’ll mean an actual ban of the UOC clergymen from the spiritual guidance of the militaries. The Chairman of the Synodal Military Department called such prospect unfair with regard to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and reminded it was namely the representatives of this Department who were the first to sign a Memorandum of Cooperation and who founded the Pastoral Care Council.

Incitement of interfaith hostility amid military actions, in his opinion, will only add to the tension and appear as a powerful factor of the society’s precariousness.

“I want to underscore that the attempts to involve interdenominational problems into the sphere of military influence are unacceptable,” he said.

Metropolitan Augustine is convinced the intentions to deprive the UOC priests of their pastoral care of the militaries is in fact “attempts to deprive thousands of men in military service – the UOC believers – of the possibility to exercise their constitutional right to the freedom of faith.”