Photo from UNIAN

Following the Unification Council held in Kyiv on Saturday, Dec 15, head of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) of the Moscow Patriarchate, Onufriy, after the Unification Council officially lost the title of Metropolitan of Kyiv and All Ukraine, according to a press secretary of the UOC of the Kyiv Patriarchate, Archbishop Yevstratiy Zorya.

The title now belongs to the head of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, a 39-year-old Epifaniy, RBC-Ukraine reports.

As UNIAN reported earlier, the Unification Council of representatives of Ukrainian Orthodox churches elected Epifaniy (Serhiy Dumenko) head of the united local Orthodox Church of Ukraine.

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It will be Epifaniy who will on January 6, 2019, receive from the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew in Constantinople (Istanbul) a tomos (a decree), granting autocephaly (independence) to the newly-created church.

On Dec 15, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said this day would go into history as a sacred day, the day of the final independence from Russia.

"And Ukraine will no longer drink, in the words of Taras Shevchenko, 'Moscow's poison from Moscow's cup,'" he said. "It is a church without a prayer for Russian power and the Russian army that kills Ukrainians," Poroshenko added.