As of now, five dioceses of the UOC-MP in the occupied territories have re-registered with the Russian Ministry of Justice, reports LB.ua editor-in-chief Sonya Koshkina.
She commented on the screenshot of the decree of Metropolitan Hilarion on the official letterhead of the Russian Orthodox Church.
"We can see that Donetsk Hilarion is no longer the UOC-MP, he is a true ROC. It follows his signature on the official letterhead... Did they come under the omophorion of Moscow, after Crimea and others, you ask? No. But they have re-registered with the Russian Ministry of Justice! To be a full-fledged subject of legal relations in the field of the Russian Federation," Koshkina explained.
She also said that as of now, the dioceses of the UOC-MP located in the temporarily occupied territories have been re-registered with the Russian Ministry of Justice:
- Donetsk and Horlivka (DNR)
- Luhansk and Rovenky dioceses (LNR)
- Berdiansk in Zaporizhzhya Region.
"Siverodonetsk, Kherson, Novokakhovka and Zaporizhzhya are still holding out. And Donetsk's Hilarion continues to be a member of the Holy Synod of the UOC-MP," the editor-in-chief added.
In July, Patriarch Kirill Gundyaev of the Russian Orthodox Church addressed the heads of various churches and representatives of international organisations with a message in which he stated that the former abbot of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra, Metropolitan Pavlo (UOC-MP), who was then taken into custody, was being "persecuted.