Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate)
The Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC), commonly referred to by the exonym Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate (UOC-MP), is an Eastern Orthodox church in Ukraine.
| Ukrainian Orthodox Church Moscow Patriarchate (disputed) | |
|---|---|
Emblem | |
| Type | Eastern Orthodox |
| Orientation | Slavic Orthodox |
| Primate | Metropolitan Onuphrius |
| Bishops | 114 (53 governing) |
| Clerics | 12,551 (2022) |
| Nuns | 2,727 |
| Parishes | 8,498 (2022) |
| Monastics | 4,620 (2022) |
| Monasteries | 161 (2022) |
| Language | Church Slavonic, Ukrainian, Romanian |
| Liturgy | Byzantine Rite |
| Territory | Ukraine |
| Origin | 988 establishment of the Metropolitanate of Kyiv 1990 (self-rule within the Moscow Patriarchate) |
| Recognition | 27 May 2022 24 March 2023 |
| Members | 6% of the Ukrainian Orthodox population |
| Official website | church |
| Part of a series on the |
| Eastern Orthodox Church |
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| Overview |
The Ukrainian Orthodox Church was officially formed in 1990 in place of Ukrainian Exarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church, under the leadership of Metropolitan Filaret, as the Ukrainian branch of the Russian Orthodox Church.
On 27 May 2022, following a church-wide council in Kyiv, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church announced its full independence and autonomy from the Moscow Patriarchate. The council made this decision in protest of the February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, and particularly in response to Russian Orthodox Church head Patriarch Kirill's support for the invasion.
The UOC is one of the two major Eastern Orthodox ecclesiastical bodies in modern Ukraine, alongside the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU). Since the Unification Council on 15 December 2018 which formed the OCU, the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople has disputed the claims by the Moscow Patriarchate of its ecclesiastical jurisdiction over the territory of Ukraine.
The Russian Orthodox Church does not currently recognize a change in their relationship to the UOC. However, in June 2023 ROC hierarch Metropolitan Leonid (Gorbachev) of Klin, scorned the UOC's decision to separate from the Moscow Patriarchate, saying, "When the opportunity presented itself to get out from under the wing of Moscow, they did it," and declared that the ROC would absorb the UOC's dioceses in Russian occupied areas of Ukraine.
By late April 2023 the local/regional councils of (the city of) Lviv, Rivne Oblast, Volyn Oblast and Zhytomyr Oblast had voted to ban the activities of the UOC-MP.
In October 2023, the Ukrainian Parliament initiated steps to ban the UOC due to its alleged ties with Russia. This came in spite of the UOC claiming it had severed ties with Moscow following Russia's invasion. However, UOC has never declared full autocephaly from Moscow.