Khust, Ukraine – “Reward Jesus” as a substitute of “whats up” is what one typically hears in Transcarpathia, Ukraine’s westernmost area.
Recognized for piousness, mesmerising folklore, forested mountains and ingenious smugglers, Transcarpathia was once dominated by the Greek-Catholic Church that preserved Orthodox rites, however considers the pope its religious chief.
Transcarpathia had by no means been a part of Russia till Soviet chief Joseph Stalin annexed it in 1944, imposing the Russian Orthodox Church whose high clerics collaborated with the KGB, the principle safety company of the Soviet period.
“Soviet intelligence both compelled all [Greek-Catholic] clergymen to the pro-communist Orthodoxy or killed them off in Siberia,” Oleh Dyba, a publicist and scholar of Transcarpathia’s spiritual life, instructed Al Jazeera.
That is the second yr when Ukraine celebrates Christmas on December 25 after a whole lot of years of celebrating it on January 7 in accordance with the Gregorian calendar nonetheless utilized by the Russian Orthodox Church.
Besides, the previously pro-Russian Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) stays the nation’s largest spiritual see.
Moscow Patriarch Kirill, who heads the world’s largest Orthodox see, was a kind of who collaborated with the KGB. He stays the closest ideological ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, a former KGB colonel.
Kirill is accused of purging dissident clergymen, he has described Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine as a “holy warfare”, and he has said that Russian servicemen dying in Ukraine have their sins “washed away”.
“Russia is nearly returning to the discourse of medieval Crusades,” Andrey Kordochkin, an Oxford-educated theologian who left Kirill’s church to hitch the Istanbul-based Patriarchate of Constantinople, instructed Al Jazeera.
Greater than a millennium in the past, Constantinople dispatched Orthodox clergymen to baptise Kyivan Prince Vladimir, a pagan Viking whose state would give beginning to what’s now Ukraine, Russia and Belarus.
The UOC was a sizeable and important a part of Moscow’s spiritual empire with hundreds of parishes and clergymen.
A few of them espoused pro-Russian views after Moscow annexed Crimea and backed separatists within the southeastern area of Donbas in 2014.
“Their priest refused to hope for my cousin who was preventing in Donbas in 2015,” Filip, a resident of the Transcarpathian village of Chynadievo, instructed Al Jazeera. “Since then, I by no means set foot in that church.”
In the meantime, the separatists turned in opposition to pro-Ukrainian clerics.
A kind of focused was Archbishop Afanasy, who confronted a mock execution in June 2014 within the insurgent “capital” of Luhansk.
He was blindfolded, positioned in opposition to a wall and heard a shot that didn’t contact him.
He left Luhansk in his rundown automobile whose brakes had been intentionally broken by the rebels, Afanasy instructed this reporter in 2018.
UOC vs OCU
In 2019, Ukraine’s pro-Western authorities established the brand new Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) that stories to the Patriarchate of Constantinople.
Nonetheless, regardless of cajoling, coercion and persecution of clerics, the previously pro-Russian UOC stays Ukraine’s largest spiritual see.
It formally broke away from Moscow and helped the warfare effort by internet hosting refugees and amassing humanitarian assist and donations for drones and medical provides.
However a lot of its leaders have been below fireplace for his or her actual or alleged pro-Moscow sympathies.
Metropolitan Mark, a white-bearded 73-year-old whose spiritual realm is centred across the tiny Transcarpathian city of Khust, is one in every of them.
Previously two years, he has been accused of getting a Russian passport – together with two dozen high UOC clerics, and constructing a $225,000 home in Sergiev Posad, a religious centre outdoors Moscow the place he had studied within the Seventies.
Mark’s nephew, driver and deacon Volodymyr Petrovtsyi faces desertion expenses after fleeing his navy unit in October and reportedly saying he didn’t need to combat his “Russian compatriots”.
One in every of Metropolitan Mark’s clerics instructed Al Jazeera that the claims about the home and the passport had been false.
“I can inform you wholeheartedly that this isn’t true,” Father Vassily mentioned, standing contained in the Khust cathedral, whose partitions and ceiling had been full of depictions of Evangelical scenes and icons.
He, nonetheless, claimed that again in 2018, well-liked comic Volodymyr Zelenskyy sought the UOC’s help forward of the presidential vote.
Father Vassily mentioned, with out offering any proof of this trade, that Zelenskyy secured the help after pledging to transform to Christianity – however by no means caught to his alleged “promise”.
“Since then, he punishes and persecutes us,” Father Vassily claimed.
Al Jazeera couldn’t independently confirm Vassily’s claims.
Since 2022, greater than 100 UOC clergymen have been suspected of treason, collaborating with Moscow-appointed officers in occupied areas and spreading Russian propaganda, Ukraine’s Safety Service, the principle intelligence company, mentioned in August.
That’s when the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s decrease home of parliament, banned the UOC to “strengthen nationwide safety and defend the constitutional order”.
‘Fairly dangerous to experiment with compatriots’
The transfer is, nonetheless, extraordinarily counterproductive, in keeping with a German researcher who spent a long time learning Ukraine’s spiritual life and visiting dozens of parishes.
Far-right teams strain the UOC into submission forcibly, taking up parishes and snubbing their parishioners who combat on the entrance strains, Nikolay Mitrokhin of the College of Bremen mentioned.
“When Ukraine is shedding on the battlefield, it’s fairly dangerous to experiment with its compatriots this fashion,” he instructed Al Jazeera.
The strain violates Ukraine’s structure and attracts criticism from the collective West, jeopardising the availability of navy and monetary assist, he mentioned, including that the strain offers the Kremlin an ideal excuse to lambast “Kyiv’s neo-Nazi junta,” unfold anti-Ukrainian messages, and acceptable parishes in Russia-occupied Ukrainian areas.
On December 16, well-liked chef Evhen Klopotenko filmed a culinary present on conventional Christmas dishes within the canteen of the Kyiv-Pecherska Lavra, a mammoth spiritual complicated in central Kyiv.
Many of the historic complicated belongs to the UOC.
The Kremlin responded to the information with predictable derision – and shared it with the pro-Russian viewers within the former Soviet Union.
“They take over church buildings to show them into circuses,” Nilufar Abdullaeva, a self-described “Russian patriot” dwelling in Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan, instructed Al Jazeera. “They misplaced all disgrace.”
The official ban on the UOC will solely power it underground, and it “will in the end emerge from there with a picture of martyr and winner”, Mitrokhin mentioned.
Lastly, the shutdown of parishes might harm and destroy hundreds of historic buildings that want fixed consideration, repairs and heating throughout harsh Ukrainian winters.
“In a short time, the catastrophic destruction of frescoes after which of buildings begins,” Mitrokhin mentioned. “Due to this fact, an enormous slice of Ukraine’s personal cultural legacy can be gone.”
