Six Months Later: The Ukrainian Orthodox Church Still At The Crossroads

In late May 2022, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) held a local council to announce independence from the Moscow Patriarchate. But six months since, it is still being determined what that independence means. Metropolitan Onufriy of Kyiv commemorates heads of other churches in the way only primates of autocephalous churches do. Still, it doesnʼt seem he ever asked them to recognize his church as autocephalous. And if one looks at what the churchʼs representatives have been saying over the last months, itʼll strike one as a mixture of “everything is different now” with “nothing has really changed.” And there lies the first problem jeopardizing the UOCʼs future: this church constantly fails to deliver an unequivocal message to its priests and the outside public.