Directions to Orthodoxy - Ukrainian schismatics to say memorial services for Yeltsin during 40 days; canonical Church calls this death-PR

A woman prays in an Orthodox Church built on the spot where Czar Nicholas II and his family were shot to death by the Bolsheviks, in the Ural city of Yekaterinburg, the native city of former President Boris Yeltsin. This post has been viewed 838 times.

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Ukrainian schismatics to say memorial services for Yeltsin during 40 days; canonical Church calls this death-PR
Posted on Fri Apr 27 2007

Kiev Patriarch Filaret

Moscow, April 26, Interfax - Clergy of the Kiev Patriarchate, unrecognized by any Orthodox Churches, started saying daily memorial services for Boris Yeltsin.

‘He was kind to Ukraine. As a Russian president he provided for our state declaring its independence peacefully and without an armed confrontation between former Soviet republics,’ the head of the self-declared patriarchate Filaret Denisenko said, the Ukrainian version of Kommersant daily reported on Thursday.

Another spokesman for the Kiev Patriarchate said they would offer memorial services for the first Russian president in St. Vladimir’s cathedral and St. Michael’s monastery every day during forty days.

‘If some other churches’ clergy would be willing to follow our example, they are welcome,’ he said.

However, a spokesman for the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate called this decision ‘a politization attempt.’ ‘It is absurdly unchristian to pray for the dead Russian president only because he had destroyed the Soviet Union,’ the canonical Church’s press-secretary Vasily Anisimov said.

According to him, the Kiev Patriarchate ‘is no church organization but an apostazing schismatic body, who promote themselves via death-PR.’

The primate of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church Metropolitan Vladimir said a memorial prayer for Boris Yeltsin when he knew the president died, but there was no formal decision to start memorial services in the Moscow Patriarchate churches, he said.

‘Everybody may go to church and have a memorial service said for Yeltsin as for any other Orthodox Christian person,’ Anisimov noted.

Discussion: Ukrainian schismatics to say memorial services for Yeltsin during 40 days; canonical Church calls this death-PR

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