The UOC of the Moscow Patriarchate has announced a collection of signatures for consideration at a meeting of the Holy Synod of the issue of the eruption from the priesthood of Archpriest Andrey Pinchuk, a cleric of the Dnipropetrovsk diocese of the UOC, reports Informator. ua. It was Andrey Pinchuk who at one time began collecting signatures under a call to subject the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church Kirill to a church court for inciting Russians to war in Ukraine. Also, the cleric from the first days of a full-scale war organized the evacuation of people from hostilities.

The so-called reasons why they want to defrock Pinchuk were cited on Facebook by the secretary of the Zaporizhzhya diocese of the UOC, Archpriest Gennady Yelin. He wrote an open letter on his page in Russian. In particular, Elin claims: “The events that took place at the beginning of the 20th century are repeated again.. Again, " Instead of bringing the Gospel truth to the world, some priests, forgetting about love for the Mother Church, pastoral duties and concern for the preservation of church unity, have made the development of political and ideological tasks set for them by the enemies of the Church the cornerstone of their activity.. In their public statements, they do not hesitate to dishonor the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, ordering her non-existent " In particular, one of the “famous” for his scandalous statements, Archpriest Andrey Pinchuk, cleric of the Dnepropetrovsk diocese, openly calls on the secular authorities to close the diocesan administrations of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, take away their property and give it to desecration. Thus, he not only discredits and harms the Church of Christ, but actually fights with her, trying to undermine her saving mission..

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It was Yelin who then called on the clergy of the UOC to sign a letter with an appeal to the Primate of the UOC, Metropolitan Onuphry. According to Elin’s plan, the Holy Synod should defrock a village priest from the village of Volosskoe, Dnepropetrovsk region. At the same time, Elin promises complete confidentiality to the signatories of the letter, because they will not publish the names and not even the names of the parishes, but only the names and dignity.. This information is not enough to accurately identify a person..

“They want to kick me out of the church because one of the people I constantly criticize is Metropolitan Luke of Zaporozhye. He is not just a metropolitan, but one of the main adherents of the " He continues to commemorate Patriarch Kirill at every service. Just a week ago, I posted a video from his service, in which he commemorates Kirill, a bloody murderer in a cassock, in my Telegram channel. At the last meeting of the Holy Synod a few months ago, Luka was included in the Synod, strengthening this body with the most pro-Moscow metropolitan,” Andrey Pinchuk noted.

According to the priest, they tried to defrock him through the Dnepropetrovsk diocese, but this did not happen. So Pinchuk's opponents, as he himself noted, decided to reach a new level - a general church.

Archpriest of the UOC Alexander Klimenko also drew attention to the strangeness of the situation.. According to him, a public appeal, such as that made by Gennady Yelin, is an attempt at an organizational coup in the UOC.

“Since when has a cleric of another diocese taken the liberty of jumping over the head of his bishop, disregarding the authority of the ruling bishop of the Dnepropetrovsk diocese and writing such appeals that actually humiliate only the author of the letter? If this appeal was written at the initiative of the ruling bishop of the Zaporozhye diocese, then the situation does not get better - one bishop tells another what to do with his cleric. Nonsense and subordinate disorder,” said Klymenko.

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Father Andrei is a priest who breaks stereotypes about his profession and lifestyle. Since the beginning of the war, he has been saving not only souls, but also lives, daily evacuating Ukrainians from hot spots. Recently, with a group of like-minded people, he initiated a letter to the court of the Eastern Patriarchs, in which the priests of the UOC-MP accuse Patriarch Kirill of heresy and demand a church tribunal for him. Read more about all this in Alla Kotlyar's interview with Archpriest Andrey Pinchuk "