The UOC Is Fighting Back—and It's Winning
The canonical Church won the battle for Holy Spirit Cathedral in Chernivtsi. Soon they will win the war: the war for Ukraine's soul.
KYIV — On Tuesday, the Holy Spirit Cathedral in Chernivtsi, a parish of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC), was seized by 50 masked men in balaclavas. These men are believed to have been hired thugs—“raiders” linked to the schismatic Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU). Ukrainian police were present but did nothing to stop the attack. Indeed, it was clear that their presence was meant to discourage any of the UOC faithful from fighting back.
Among those wounded in the siege was Archpriest Vitaliy Honcharuk. The OCU raiders stabbed Fr. Vitaley in the face, leaving a deep wound that gushed blood. (There’s a video of the incident, but it’s not for the squeamish.) According to a preliminary medical report, Fr. Vitaley also has several broken ribs and may have sustained internal injuries.
Such scenes are depressingly common in Ukraine nowadays. What happened next, however, was quite unexpected. Indeed, it was a miracle. Just a few hours later, more than 5,000 faithful of the UOC surged past police barricades and reclaimed their cathedral.
It was an astonishing scene. Elderly women, grandfathers with canes, young men and women, priests with flowing beards—all determined to defend their faith, to worship in the church where they were baptized and buried their dead. They weren’t armed. They didn’t burn anything. They didn’t shout slogans. They prayed, they wept, they sang hymns. And they marched.
Of course, the Western press didn’t cover the event. The average American might be forgiven for believing that the UOC has long since disappeared—swept away by the righteous indignation of Ukrainians who wanted nothing to do with “the Russian Church.” But reports of the UOC’s death, as they say, have been greatly exaggerated.
This single incident reveals far more than most analysts are willing to admit. It suggests that the UOC remains not only viable but vibrant. Moreover, it is almost certainly the largest Orthodox body in Ukraine, despite years of marginalization, persecution, and propaganda.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way. In 2019, Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople (acting at the behest of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo) granted “autocephaly” to a new ecclesial body, the Orthodox Church of Ukraine. By contrast, the UOC—the ancient, canonical Church in Ukraine—was painted as a vestige of Russian imperialism, loyal to Patriarch Kirill and Vladimir Putin.
The OCU and its supporters in Kiev, Washington, and Constantinople assumed that the UOC would wither on the vine. The Ukrainian faithful had other ideas.
According to a report by Dr. Thomas Bremer, which was published by the Orthodox Christian Studies Center at Fordham University in 2022, the Ukrainian government has played fast and loose with the numbers in order to support the OCU’s claim to preeminence.
Until recently, the Ukrainian government's “official” statistic claimed that the OCU is larger than the UOC by far.
Yet, according to Dr. Bremer, these numbers are based largely on inaccurate—even deceptive—surveys of the Ukrainian public. For instance, statisticians for the Ukrainian government have used deliberately misleading questions in order to trick citizens into identifying with the schismatic OCU.
According to Dr. Bremer’s research, the two churches are roughly the same size. The UOC may even be larger. This, despite a decade of intensifying persecution by the Ukrainian government and nationalist mobs.
Indeed, earlier this month, the Ukrainian government quietly acknowledged that the UOS remains the larger of the two. The State Service for Ethnic Policy and Freedom of Conscience (DESS), an agency of the Ukrainian government, stated that as of January 1, 2025, the UOC is comprised of 10,118 religious organizations, including 9,792 religious communities. The OCU, meanwhile, has 8,511 registered organizations, which would include at least 1,500 communities illegally seized from the UOC).
If that’s true, then Ukraine’s largest religious body is being systematically disenfranchised by its own government. This is a staggering violation of religious freedom—one that would provoke an international outcry if it occurred in Russia, Hungary, or any other country on Washington’s bad-boy list. But because it’s happening in Ukraine, and because the victims have been labelled (inaccurately) as “pro-Russian,” the West remains silent.
There is an ugly irony here. The same American officials and journalists who preach endlessly about the sacredness of democracy and pluralism are cheerleading the slow strangulation of a 1,000-year-old Church. Worse, they’re complicit in the rise of a government-backed religious monopoly that bears a disturbing resemblance to the old Soviet “Living Church.”
And yet, despite everything—despite losing hundreds of churches, despite having dozens of their priests beaten and imprisoned, despite being barred from military chaplaincy, despite being slandered and blacklisted—the UOC lives. The events in Chernivtsi are not an outlier, an isolated outburst. They are part of a broader pattern. Ukrainian Orthodox Christians are refusing to abandon their ancestral Church. They are refusing to accept a state-mandated “orthodoxy.” They refuse to be erased.
But the faithful remember. And in Chernivtsi, they reminded the world that this Church still has a heartbeat–and then some. The UOC may be beleaguered, but it is not broken. It may be censored, but it is not silent. And it may be persecuted, but it is far from dead.
If 5,000 believers can suddenly come together and recapture a cathedral from OCU raiders and the police, who knows what they might do next?
The true strength of the UOC is unknown, perhaps even to the UOC itself. No doubt many of those who reclaimed the Holy Spirit Cathedral were surprised by their own tenacity—their own power to affect change. They have lived in fear of their government for long enough. Now, at last, they have said, “Enough.”
The example of the UOC is an inspiration to us all.
May God continue to grant victories to the Orthodox Christians over their enemies.
