Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Moscow Patriarchate denies Onufrii and other priests having Russian passports
The Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate (UOC-MP) denies that Metropolitan Onufrii and other churchmen have Russian citizenship. Source: statement of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate (UOC-MP) Quote: "His Beatitude Metropolitan Onufrii is a citizen of Ukraine by birth and does not possess passports of other countries."
Details: The church called the publication of Ukrainska Pravda regarding the Russian citizenship of Onufrii and a number of other UOC-MP priests "unreliable and manipulative".
They also assure that some bishops mentioned in the video were stripped of their citizenship allegedly "without any justification", and therefore they filed a lawsuit with the demand to restore their Ukrainian citizenship since they have no other. The court opened proceedings at their request. "Since the Security Service of Ukraine has repeatedly stated that it checked all UOC bishops for dual citizenship, and did not cancel the Ukrainian citizenship of other bishops mentioned in the story, the information in the video material cannot be true.
Especially since the author of the video cited as evidence footage that is frankly dubious, and the content of which is not confirmed by anything", the UOC-MP representatives said. They also accused the journalists of "persistently looking for non-existent Russian passports of the bishops of the UOC, and instead ignoring the frank statements of representatives of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) that the bishops of this religious organisation have citizenships of the Russian Federation and the so-called LPR". The UOC-MP did not specify which "frank statements" they are talking about.
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Background: According to the investigation by Ukrainska Pravda, Metropolitan Onufrii (nee Orest Berezovskyi) of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate (UOC-MP) and over 20 other clergymen have Russian citizenship. According to an extract from the Rospasport [Russian Passport] system, Onufrii obtained a Russian passport in Moscow on 20 March 2002. A year later, on 23 June 2003, he also received a foreign passport as a Russian citizen.
This was not the first passport the churchman received. He also obtained one in Moscow in 1998. The bishop of the UOC-MP and abbot of the tithe monastery Hedeon (nee Yurii Kharon); former Metropolitan Yelysiei (Oleh Ivanov) of Izium and Kupiansk; Metropolitan Ionofan (Anatolii Yeletskykh) of Tulchyn and Bratslav; Bishop Serhii (Serhii Anitsoi) of Ladyzhyn, Vicar of the Tulchyn Eparchy; Archbishop Panteleimon (Viktor Bashchuk), Vicar of the Kyiv Eparchy; Metropolitan Meletii (Valentyn Yehorenko), Head of the Chernivtsi-Bukovyna Eparchy; Metropolitan Mark (Mykola Petrovtsii), Bishop of Khust Eparchy; Metropolitan Irynei (Ivan Serednii), Bishop of the Diocese of Dnipro are also among the clergy of the UOC-MP possessing Russian passports, according to UP.
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