The Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople has arrived on a visit to Ukraine to attend festivities marking the 30th anniversary of its declaration of independence.
On Saturday, Patriarch Batholomew and the new Orthodox Church of Ukraine leader, Metropolitan Epiphanius I, conducted liturgy in Kyiv's St. Michael's Cathedral.
The patriarch met late Friday with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who invited him to Ukraine to attend the 30th independence anniversary on Tuesday.
Ukraine declared its independence on Aug. 24, 1991, days after the collapse of a Soviet hardline coup that precipitated the breakup of the USSR.
The move was hailed by many Ukrainians, who had resented the status of the Moscow-affiliated church. The push for a full-fledged Ukrainian church was bolstered by fighting in eastern Ukraine between government forces and Russia-backed rebels.
The conflict in the country’s industrial heartland erupted after Russia’s annexation in 2014 of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula and has killed more than 14,000 since then.
The Russian Orthodox Church has denounced the move by the Constantinople Patriarch, which forced clergy and believers to choose between belonging to the old Moscow-affiliated church or the new Ukrainian one, as a politically-driven encroachment on religious freedoms.
Following Bartholomew I’s decision for the Ukrainian church independence, the Russian Orthodox Church severed ties with the Constantinopolitan Patriarchate in Istanbul.
Russian Orthodox Church cuts off all ties with Patriarchate of Constantinople
