Collected by: Harvard College Library – Americas, Europe, and Oceania Division

Archived since: Jul, 2020

Description:

From the early 1990s, Ukrainian Orthodox had been divided into three communities -- the Moscow Patriarchate, which was recognized as canonical, the Kyiv Patriarchate, and the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, which were both regarded as “schismatic”. A new Orthodox Church of Ukraine was established by a unification council on December 15, 2018 and received its Tomos of autocephaly (decree of ecclesial independence) on January 5, 2019 as a result of joint efforts by Ukraine’s political leadership, and the Ecumenical Patriarch. After the OCU had been canonically recognized, the individual parishes of the UOC-MP began the process of transitioning to the new Church. The creation of a new independent Orthodox church has its implications not only for the Ukrainian society, but for Eastern Christianity and geopolitics more broadly.