Head of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyiv Patriarchate (UOC-KP) Filaret has said he will appeal to the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine's parliament, with a request to pass a law on a single local church in Ukraine, as well as to rename the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate into the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine.
"We will be striving to have a single Orthodox Church in Ukraine and to make sure that the Russian [Orthodox] Church is not hiding under the Ukrainian name while, in essence, it is Russian," he said in an exclusive interview to Radio Liberty.
Read alsoPatriarch Filaret: Process of granting autocephaly to UOC irreversible
Once the Istanbul-based Ecumenical Patriarchate delivers a formal decree on the Kyiv Patriarchate's independence from Moscow, Filaret said that "the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate will no longer have the right to be called the Ukrainian Orthodox Church."
"Instead, it will be named as the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine," Filaret said.
He said the official name of an independent church will be the "Ukrainian Orthodox Church," but it also will be known as the "Kyiv Patriarchate."
As UNIAN reported earlier, on October 11, following a meeting of the Synod, a decision was announced, stating that the Ecumenical Patriarchate proceeds to granting autocephaly to the Church of Ukraine.
In addition, the legal binding of the Synod's letter of 1686 was abolished, thus taking the Kyiv Metropolis from under Moscow's canonical jurisdiction. Also, head of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyiv Patriarchate (UOC-KP) Filaret and head of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (UAOC) Makariy were reinstated in their canonical status.
On October 12, the UOC-KP urged the hierarchs of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate (UOC-MP) to prepare for a special unification council.
