IONAFAN, Archbishop of Tulchyn and Bratslav
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· Ukrainian archbishop hopes new Ukrainian President won’t press the Church
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Posted on Mon Feb 08 2010
“I can responsibly state that, first of all, division of God’s people into West and East in Ukraine doesn’t correspond to reality. There’re Orthodox people everywhere, and everywhere spiritual revival is underway, masses of people are coming back to church fold,” the Archbishop said in his interview to Interfax-Religion on Monday.
Kiev, February 8, Interfax - Archbishop Ionafan of Tulchin and Bratslav believes dividing Ukraine into East and West on confessional grounds is unreasonable.
“I can responsibly state that, first of all, division of God’s people into West and East in Ukraine doesn’t correspond to reality. There’re Orthodox people everywhere, and everywhere spiritual revival is underway, masses of people are coming back to church fold,” the Archbishop said in his interview to Interfax-Religion on Monday.
He mentioned that Orthodox Church in Ukraine was unfortunately split “on political, nationalistic grounds,” but stressed, “majority of Orthodox have remained faithful to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate, to His Holiness the Patriarch.”
“After a year of Patriarch Kirill’s primatial ministry, I can say that Ukrainian Orthodox people kneeled up and many people, both clerics and laymen, say they belong to the Moscow Patriarchate,” the Archbishop said.
Last summer, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed a decree to decorate Archbishop Ionafan with an Order of Friendship for “great contribution in developing cooperation between the Russian Federation and Ukraine.”
Archbishop Ionafan is a pupil of the renowned pastor Metropolitan Nikodim of Leningrad and Novgorod who was a spiritual father for many church hierarchs including Patriarch Kirill.
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