Difficulties only make us stronger
• an interview with Metropolitan Feodosii

— Dear Vladyka, you have gone through physical attacks, court cases and a media harassment campaign. What was the hardest thing for you, as a bishop, spiritually during this period?

— I think this period of life has not yet passed. In Ukraine the persecution of the Orthodox Church continues: churches and monasteries are being taken from us by raiding methods, a legislative framework has been created for the complete ban of the UOC on contrived grounds, and believers are beaten. Various public institutions, both state and civil, take part in this religious harassment, and the information support for the persecution is provided by a multitude of media outlets. The Constitution, as they say, is currently "on pause" in Ukraine. Those who try to defend themselves and others by lawful means, or even simply to speak about the existing problems, are persecuted, and criminal cases are fabricated against them.

As of today I know of five criminal cases against me personally; perhaps there are others of which I am unaware. The SBU has carried out searches in my house four times, during which the Statute of the Cherkasy Eparchy was seized. At every search all the phones and computers were confiscated, yet nothing unlawful was found in them. By court order my telephone conversations were tapped for a long time and I was kept under physical surveillance, but nothing criminal could be recorded. Nevertheless, three court proceedings are under way today over my public interviews and sermons, going back even to the pre-war period. One trial has recently ended with a guilty verdict.

I received the verdict in that trial for a sermon with words of support and consolation to the nuns who, in November 2023, during the bloody seizure of the women's monastery of the Nativity of the Most Holy Mother of God in Cherkasy, were thrown out into the freezing cold by criminals in military uniform. And this is by no means an exaggeration. The sermon was addressed to the beaten priests, to the faithful… This sermon is publicly available, as is the footage of the bloody beating of our clergy and laity during that seizure of the monastery by radicals in military uniform. The suit against me was then brought by a former priest of our eparchy who had been banned from serving, whose son had taken part in this seizure, and who himself defected to the "OCU". It was to him, in the end, that the invaders handed the keys of the monastery they had ravaged, so that he could run it as he pleased. And this beneficiary of the seizure went to court to make me fall silent, so that others too would not dare to bring to light the works of darkness now being committed against our Church. The prosecutor's office demanded two years' imprisonment for me and will now insist on this on appeal, which we expect in the near future.

I understand that it would be more convenient for many people in Ukraine if the bishops and clergy of the UOC kept silent about the persecution of the Church that is taking place. But can a bishop stand aside when the religious feelings of believers are offended, when Christians are mocked and abused?.. In principle I am against covering up evil.

As for politically motivated verdicts, which have already become common practice in our country, including my own verdict, we will of course seek to challenge it and to obtain a just ruling, not only at the appeal stage but, if necessary, we will go to the court of cassation, to the Supreme Court of Ukraine, to the European Court of Human Rights. Data from a report of the European Court of Human Rights was recently published, according to which Ukraine loses 98% of its cases at the ECtHR. Doesn't that say something?

One can, of course, try to understand in human terms the logic of some Ukrainian judges who today pass unjust and even criminal verdicts in "political" cases. It is both fear for themselves and their families, fear for their careers, and sometimes simply political bias. But such decisions cannot be justified. Nor can the specific judges who make such decisions be justified. I am sure that in time they will receive a just assessment.

You asked what, in this period, is the hardest for me spiritually. I will answer. It is betrayal. This is perhaps the hardest thing that one has to face constantly today, and in different spheres and at different levels of the life of society and of the Church. Betrayal of one's former principles, betrayal of one's history, betrayal of common sense, finally. The war and the persecution of the Church have laid people's innards bare, as it were stripped from them the mask of decency, turned them inside out. In many, an inner nobility has been laid bare, or its absence. Sometimes it can be very painful to encounter this.

But the Lord said: "Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven" (Matt. 5:11-12, KJV). The words of Christ strengthen and comfort believing people in times of persecution of the Church.

— In your eparchy, to our great regret, there have been many cases of seizures of churches and violations of believers' rights. Please tell us how ordinary people are going through this period. What helps the communities not to fall apart, and the parishioners to keep their faith after they have been beaten, maimed and driven out of their churches? 

— The loss of churches is a temporary phenomenon. This has often happened in the history of the Church. Liturgical life is precisely what unites us Christians. Communities driven out of their churches, as before, continue now too to take part in the Eucharist and in the other sacraments of the Church. No one who lives by the Lord Jesus Christ and His Chalice is lost. Our communities, as a rule, look in advance for temporary premises for liturgical life, and when their church is taken by force they move to the place prepared for services and prayer. Most often these are private houses in villages converted into churches, or apartments, attics and basements of multi-storey buildings in the cities. There are quite a few such examples not only in the Cherkasy Eparchy but also in other eparchies. Although, the further we go, the less we try to advertise such places, because the persecution of the Church is growing ever worse, and there are western regions, for example the Lviv region, where it is becoming dangerous to gather even in such secret places of prayer. A wave of implacable persecution is gradually rolling from the west of Ukraine to the east, and even the secret gatherings of UOC believers are gradually becoming a target for radicals.

The radicals are, as a rule, covered for by the local authorities, sometimes in the most lawless way. Here is the example of the Cathedral of the Archangel Michael in Cherkasy, seized from us by force, the largest Orthodox church in Ukraine. Security agencies from various departments took part in the bloody seizure. The operation had been worked out in advance. In addition, city council deputies were noticed during the mass beating of the Orthodox. And the first to show up after the beaten faithful had been driven out through the cathedral gates was the mayor of the city with his entourage. But the most shocking thing in this situation is not even that the occupied cathedral de jure still remains the property of our eparchy, and no prosecutor's office or courts care about it. The grotesque part of the situation is that the representatives of the OCU who occupied our property have for a year and a half been unable to pay for the use of someone else's cathedral and are trying, through the courts, to force us, the beaten and expelled owners, to pay their utility bills for them! This is the situation of madness in which we are living now.

But God's strength is made perfect in weakness. And many of our believers rightly perceive this time of persecution as a time of special blessing from God for our weak spiritual life. Shared difficulties only make our parishioners and priests stronger, their prayer more fervent, and their desire to partake more often of the Holy Mysteries of Christ more irresistible.

— You say that the degree of pressure on the UOC is growing. Even ever more sophisticated and Jesuitical methods are being used. One of them is the forced mobilisation of priests into the army. How serious is this problem? Does it affect the whole UOC or only certain eparchies? And how should this challenge be met now?

— Forced mobilisation is a problem not only for believers. Many citizens of Ukraine, for various reasons, do not want to or cannot serve in the army. Yet despite this, many are subjected to forced mobilisation. As for our priests, on the one hand this is a story within the general trend, and on the other hand we are subjected to discrimination compared with representatives of other denominations.

Today we can say with confidence that there is a deliberate attempt at the physical liquidation of the priests of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church through mobilisation. Special discriminatory legislation has recently been adopted in Ukraine which forbids the clerics of our Church to be exempted from mobilisation, unlike other Ukrainian denominations, which have the right to complete exemption from the army. In my view, this has been done with an obvious aim: to behead the church communities of the UOC across the whole country and to deprive believers of their pastors. Today our clergy are seized by force in the streets and sent to the front. There are dozens of such cases. Their number is growing every day. Some priests die quickly at the front, since according to the canons of the Church they have no right even to take up arms.

Just a few days ago I spoke at the 61st session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva by videoconference (since the Ukrainian courts do not allow me to leave the country physically in order to take part in the meetings of the session in person). I spoke with a statement that Orthodox clergy in our country are being rounded up and forced into the ranks with weapons in their hands, fully understanding that this is forbidden by the canons. At the same time, UOC clerics, when they have been forcibly mobilised, are categorically forbidden to become chaplains, to exercise pastoral care over believers in the ranks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. This is a serious problem, discrimination on religious grounds, which not infrequently leads to the death of clergy.

— But Ukraine today declares itself a democratic state governed by the rule of law. Where is the ombudsman looking, the one responsible for observing the rights and freedoms of citizens, including the faithful of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church?

— A good question. I will answer it this way. As a hierarch of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and a human rights defender by necessity, I have many times had to speak in the session hall of the UN in Geneva at various hearings on the violation of the rights of the believers of our Church in my country. And several times already, my speeches and those of the ombudsman of Ukraine, Dmytro Lubinets, have been literally next to each other, a few minutes apart. He knows perfectly well who I am and what I am compelled to speak about before the mandate-holders and diplomats at the UN. And yet not only has he never once himself shown any interest in the subject of my speeches, which bear directly on his own responsibility in Ukraine. No, moreover, the Ukrainian ombudsman, in violation of the law, completely ignored even my official appeal to him personally on behalf of the Cherkasy Eparchy concerning the violation of the rights of believers in the Cherkasy region and the forcible seizure of the cathedral in our city, when militants shot at our parishioners and I was beaten over the head with a club. This appeal was drawn up by our lawyers in accordance with all the required rules and contained documented information about the persecution of the Church in our region, in my eparchy. Incidentally, this information was also requested by the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, its authenticity was verified, and it formed the basis of several UN reports on human rights violations in Ukraine. But our ombudsman simply ignored all this. I think this characterises very well the present state of human rights in Ukraine.

— The fate of the Church is in the hands of God. Yes, theoretically, a Pan-Orthodox Council could contribute to the establishment of Orthodox unity in spirit and in truth, in communion in the Holy Sacraments, in the recognition of common canonical foundations and of mutual love in Christ. But in practice the question of holding a Pan-Orthodox Council remains open for a number of objective reasons. The main one, in my deep conviction, is the following. The format of the Pan-Orthodox Council that was proposed and discussed at the inter-Orthodox meetings of the twentieth century, and that is now being imposed on world Orthodoxy by the Phanar and a number of Churches dependent on it, can in no way be considered a Council in the patristic sense of the word. And therefore such an assembly cannot in any way be credited with the competence of a Council. What, after all, are we being offered? Instead of the universal participation in such a Pan-Orthodox Council of all the Orthodox bishops of the world, as was laid down from apostolic times and confirmed by the Fathers of the Church, we are offered participation in an assembly of equal delegations from each of the Local Churches with an equal right to vote, be it a delegation from a Church with five bishops or a delegation from a Church with 500 bishops.

That is, it is not Orthodox bishops from all over the world who vote, each following his own conscience. No, delegations vote, with equal decisive powers. One delegation, one vote. Whether 500 bishops or five bishops, it is one vote. Their influence on the adoption of a Pan-Orthodox decision will be equivalent.

That is, we are being offered a manipulative substitution of the conciliar mind of the Church under the guise of a "convenient" procedure. And this at a time when quite a number of church-wide questions today are sharply controversial and require a truly Pan-Orthodox decision, not backroom deals. Could the decisions of such an assembly of delegations, especially in the absence of consensus, possibly be sealed with the formula "It seemed good to the Holy Ghost, and to us"? Of course not. We are being offered sheer manipulation, which certain forces in world Orthodoxy insist on as a matter of principle. And we understand why they insist on it. When they speak of the technical impossibility of holding a full-fledged Council, this is untrue. There are several Local Orthodox Churches which could quite well (and do offer to) provide a worthy venue for holding a genuine Pan-Orthodox Council. But they do not even want to hear of it. Therefore to speak of the prospects of holding a Pan-Orthodox Council in the near future is, it seems to me, unrealistic.

— Is the situation in Ukraine itself a crisis that has arisen around a struggle between the Moscow Patriarchate and the Phanar for jurisdiction? Or does it all have a deeper subtext and touch upon the sphere of dogma?

— Certainly there is a subtext, and it is much more fundamental than it may seem to an outside observer who is not very church-minded.

From the point of view of canon law, the situation is such that in Ukraine there is now one and only Orthodox Church. Today it bears the name Ukrainian Orthodox Church. It is the historical Church on the lands that form part of modern Ukraine, and it has existed here for more than a thousand years. Our Church is the continuous legal successor of the Kyiv Metropolia of the Russian Orthodox Church from the time of the Baptism of Rus in 988 by the holy Prince Volodymyr. Further, during the temporary two-hundred-year division of the Church of Rus' into two parts, it was called the Western Russian Metropolia; in the twentieth century it was called the Ukrainian Exarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church; and from 27 October 1990 to the present day it has been called the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and has the status of a self-governing Church with broad autonomy, according to the Charter of His Holiness Alexy II, Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus.

The apostolic succession of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church is recognised by all the Local Churches of the world, and the canonicity of its hierarchy and the grace and validity of its sacraments raise doubts in no one. By contrast, the canonicity of the ordinations in the so-called "Orthodox Church of Ukraine" raises, to put it mildly, a number of well-founded doubts. And it is precisely this that is the main stumbling block to resolving the question of the church schism in Ukraine. Moreover, this question has given rise to a fundamental division of opinion among the hierarchs of other Local Churches, and also between whole Local Churches. Without exaggeration one can say that this question may become the cause of a new great schism in world Orthodoxy. The Christian conscience of millions of Orthodox laypeople, priests and hierarchs around the world cannot in any way agree that yesterday's schismatics, without repentance and without lawful ordinations, simply with a stroke of a pen at the Phanar, have suddenly replaced with themselves the lawful canonical Church within the borders of a whole Orthodox country, Ukraine. And that, on top of this, they have begun to destroy this historical Church by bloody methods with the help of the state machine.

As a hierarch of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, whose eparchy has suffered greatly from the actions of the OCU and who is personally acquainted with His Holiness Patriarch Bartholomew, in the autumn of 2025 I addressed an open appeal to His Holiness. In it I drew the attention of the Patriarch of Constantinople to the deep canonical and historical causes of the church problems that have arisen in Ukraine. I reminded him that our Church had endured similar difficulties and persecution after the October coup d'état in the Russian Empire at the beginning of the twentieth century, when the new Bolshevik government launched persecution of Christians, relying among others on the Renovationists, an artificial "red church" which, exactly as today, was legalised at that time by Constantinople together with the Churches dependent on it. To my great regret, no reply has so far come from Patriarch Bartholomew regarding his understanding of the situation with the seizures of churches and the oppression of believers in Ukraine, or the ways of settling these contradictions.

— In your opinion, what help from the other Local Churches would now be most useful to the UOC?

— Perhaps, first of all, it is prayerful help. And it already exists. Sometimes we feel it very strongly in Ukraine. We sincerely thank the Primates, hierarchs, clergy and faithful of the other Local Orthodox Churches for this prayerful, spiritual support.   

In addition, it seems to me, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church would be greatly helped by two areas of support that the sister Churches can provide.

The first is to speak out, on all possible international platforms and also before the governments of their own countries, about the persecution of Christians that is taking place in the very centre of Europe in the twenty-first century! I am sure that if all who now sympathise with us and offer us prayerful help were to join fully in this support, the world community would willy-nilly be compelled to listen to the voice of Orthodoxy in Europe and other corners of the world and would exert an appropriate influence on the persecutors inside Ukraine.

And the second is a consolidated defence of the canonical structure of world Orthodoxy, of its traditions and order. Today the harm from the unilateral decision of Patriarch Bartholomew to legalise the Ukrainian schism is already obvious to everyone. The consequences of this decision are catastrophic. They not only launched a process of bloody persecution of the UOC inside our country, but also brought world Orthodoxy to the brink of schism. In this connection I am sure that if the Local Orthodox Churches that sympathise with our common tragedy took a firm canonical position on the Ukrainian question, then in time we could together resolve not only this question within the canonical framework but also protect other Local Churches from such unpredictable outside interference in their internal affairs. And precisely this would preserve the unity of world Orthodoxy for future generations.