Filaret: I’ve addressed unification of Orthodox and Catholics for 30 years

Head of the Kyiv Patriarchate Filaret Denisenko. Photo: screenshot of the video on the YouTube channel “ZIK Channel”

Filaret Denisenko, the “Primate” of the UOC-KP, said on the ZIK TV channel that he had been dealing with the unification of the Orthodox Church with the RCC for more than 30 years and commented on the possible unification of the OCU with the UGCC.

According to Filaret, who was introduced on the television channel as the “Honorary Patriarch of the OCU”, such a union is possible only if the UGCC joins Epiphany Dumenko’s church structure.

The Head of the Kyiv Patriarchate is convinced that it is absolutely impossible that the OCU should join the UGCC in independent Ukraine. “The Orthodox Church remained Orthodox” even in the context of the centuries-old struggle for the merger of the Orthodox with the Catholics, and this struggle continued even when “there was no Ukrainian state,” Filaret explained his point of view.

In his opinion, an alternative is possible when the Orthodox Church unites with the RCC.

“I’d been addressing this issue for more than 30 years, conducted high-level talks with the Roman Catholic Church. We came to the conclusion that it was impossible. Why is it impossible? Because the Roman Catholic Church will not renounce the dogma of papacy, while the Orthodox Church will never recognize the dogma of papacy,” Filaret explained.

Earlier it became known that, at the expense of grants allocated by the EU, the Institute for Foreign Policy Studies, with the support of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, plans to study public opinion on the accession of the UGCC to the OCU.

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