THE Primate of Ukraine’s independent Orthodox Church, Metropolitan Epiphany (Dumenko), has asked St Nicholas to save his country and reunite its divided Orthodox inhabitants, as the Pope joined other church leaders in calls for a Christmas ceasefire in the three-year war.
“Our first request is for the victory of truth, and a just, blessed peace for Ukraine and all of Europe,” Metropolitan Epiphany said on Monday during a visit to the saint’s traditional burial place at Bari, in Italy.
“Protect and defend our brothers and sisters, military and civilian, now in Russian captivity, and help return illegally kidnapped Ukrainian children. We know with what cruelty the enemies treat our captives, who have no human protection.”
The Metropolitan spoke after Russia launched a massive new assault on his country’s energy infrastructure with 290 missiles and drones, but was also reported to have suffered heavy losses during slow ground advances in eastern Ukraine.
He said he also hoped that St Nicholas would help Orthodox Christians to find “unanimity and peace” in his Church, the OCU, currently celebrating the sixth anniversary of its foundation under the Ecumenical Patriarchate’s patronage.
“As a people, we wanted peace, which is why we are the world’s only country that voluntarily renounced nuclear weapons,” Metropolitan Epiphany said.
“But the Russian state deceived the whole world, by promising to respect our sovereignty, statehood, and borders, and then treacherously breaking its promises, just as Cain unexpectedly attacked and killed Abel in the field. . . Although we do not know how peace will be established, and the evil of Russian aggression stopped, condemned, and justly punished, we know for certain that the God of truth and peace will help.”
The Primate’s week-long Italian tour included his first meeting on 13 December with the Pope, who described Ukrainians and Russians as “brothers and cousins”, and urged a “long-awaited peace”, in an address in St Peter’s Square on Sunday.
The Conference of European Churches (CEC) said that calls had also been made for a Christmas ceasefire during an inter-Church summit last week in Warsaw, as well as for “comprehensive prisoner exchanges”, support for army chaplains, and “legal protections for conscientious objectors”.
“As Christians, we are called to speak truth, deconstruct violent narratives, and side with justice,” the President of the CEC, the Greek Orthodox Archbishop Nikitas (Lulias) of Thyateira & Great Britain, said in a press release.
“The victory of truth involves protecting life, restoring justice, and building solidarity. CEC remains committed to supporting Ukrainian churches and advancing a vision of just and lasting peace.”
Reacting to the Pope’s talks with Metropolitan Epiphany, the Russian Tsargrad TV channel said that Pope Francis had now “thrown off the mask of a peacemaker” and “supported the destruction of canonical Orthodoxy in Ukraine”.
The former director of ecumenical studies at Lviv Catholic University, Pavlo Smytsnyuk, said that the unprecedented meeting in Rome had, nevertheless, strengthened the OCU’s “authority in the world”, also signalling that the Vatican was now “paying less attention to what is thought in Moscow”.
In a letter to the Apostolic Nuncio to Russia, Archbishop Giovanni d’Aniello, published last weekend on the front page of L’Osservatore Romano, the Pope said that he counted on “renewed diplomatic efforts” to halt the conflict, in the approach to Christmas.
“The painful and prolonged duration of this war urgently challenges us, recalling our duty to reflect together on how to alleviate the sufferings of those affected and rebuild peace. Their cry rises to God, invoking peace instead of war, dialogue instead of the roar of weapons, and solidarity instead of self-interest, because one can never kill in the name of God.”
In a message on X last week, President Zelensky accused the Hungarian Prime Minister, Viktor Orbán, whose country currently holds the European Union’s rotating presidency, of undermining Western unity in a lengthy phone call to President Putin, during which he also reportedly proposed a Christmas ceasefire.
Mr Orbán, who met the Pope on 4 December, again, on Monday, blocked the inclusion of Patriarch Kirill of Moscow in a fresh list of EU sanctions against those responsible for undermining Ukraine’s “territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence”.
The Religious Information Service of Ukraine said that Russian forces had banned references to the Western Santa Claus in occupied regions of the war-ravaged country, and ordered schools to mark Christmas in conformity with “Russian culture”.
The Kyiv Culture Ministry said that it had directed Ukraine’s Moscow-linked Orthodox Church, the UOC, to hand back another “illegally owned” landmark, the 12th-century Dormition Cathedral, in Kaniv, to the state, as a further “step in the struggle for the restoration of historical justice”.
In a pre-Christmas message on Monday, the Primate of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, said that the previous week had been “once again filled with air attacks, destruction, blood, tears, and heavy fighting on the entire front line”, and thanked “all Ukrainians who are not fleeing, but living and dying here, giving their lives so as not to give up their motherland”.