mine, to her personal life, relationships between people, even relationships with the closest people, attitudes to the state, to the church, er, all this is in a state of rethinking, including when a person is looking for god, or already had a certain, er -er, spiritual, religious experience, the war with... sharpened a person's search for meaning, a person asks himself: why did this happen to me? god, where are you when they kill us? how to choose the right path, landmarks during such a great disorientation, and this is all, let's say, pushes a person to look for these, these from... the answers to such very difficult

questions, and we all understand that no person can answer these questions, the answer can only be given by the one in whose hands lies the fate of man and the whole world, er, and a person, even a non-believer , she is looking for those eternal values ​​without which her life has no meaning, and it is obvious that by reevaluating... all her spiritual and moral guidelines, a person in one way or another gets closer to god and the church. i want to tell you that we have experience that certain of our parishes, in particular in the central, eastern, southern ukraine, changed by 100%. there are communities where 100% of people were evacuated, but they came. new this year, for example, all

our simple pilgrimages that we had, we couldn't do them in an organized way, because we live under martial law, but they were all very crowded, people are looking, people, people are thirsty for god, and that christian community that feeds... people with real spiritual food, it is very popular today, so i can say that the ukrainian people are in a state of war today experiences such a particularly spiritual conversion, then that thirst for god is particularly acute, and all our churches are full, and there is not a single priest who feels unemployed. we all really work to

the limit of our strength and capabilities, but we serve the lord god and our ukrainian people with great joy. if in the christian sense, at least in the evangelical sense, what is the freedom that christ gives, christians understand, and independence, spiritual freedom, as where the spirit of the lord is there. freedom, jesus said i give you freedom, see that, and then, it is true that your freedom should not be an excuse to please your flesh, but the essence of that freedom, that independence, which the ukrainian state celebrates, is political, cultural, spiritual, however you characterize it, we are independent of what and how this, as they say, this, as they say, relays us this independence, how to explain it? well, let me take this

opportunity to congratulate all our listeners on the independence day of ukraine. this day is today a personal holiday. every ukrainian, every ukrainian family, because we we feel that our life directly depends on whether we will have a free, conciliar, independent state, the question of our independence, our... freedom is a question of life and death for the entire nation, so this is a personal holiday. i remember how when we got this independence, in 1991, in all our churches spontaneously, on august 24, it was a spiritual, almost religious holiday. i remember how in those first years independently. that day, people opened everything, and the first

thing they did that day was go to church to pray, it was someone who was very... well, spontaneous movement, this independence, first of all, had a spiritual meaning, and here there are several dimensions of this spiritual meaning of our state independence: first, we all understood that ukraine's independence is a gift from god. we then saw how at the dawn, let's say, when this independence was only, only, only... it was shown, like the sun rising from the horizon, that the ukrainian greek-catholic church came out of the underground, which became, as it were, this with a stone that hit those clay legs of that soviet colossus, it simply crumbled. we

understood that independence, our state is a gift from god, a gift, as god's answer to... these centuries-old struggles of our people, which we call today national liberation, the crown of these struggles was the martyrdom of the ukrainian greco-lod church, in particular during the times the communist regime, so the people thanked, but this gift still had to be kept, we all saw that this state, which was born after... the collapse of the soviet union, it is still a post-soviet state, that freedom is a multi-meaning concept, it has not only the meaning is some legal or political,

first of all moral. er, in christian philosophy and theology, we are always used to talk about freedom in such a double meaning. freedom from and freedom for when we talk about our national freedom, this is how we talk about the independence of the beginning, this is freedom from, from enslavement, freedom from those neo-colonial encroachments of moscow, which today especially manifested themselves in all their bloodthirstiness during this full-scale invasion. but it is also freedom for. this freedom still needs to be properly used. we, as christians have convinced themselves many times that freedom is the ability, the opportunity to do

good. if we use this opportunity, the opportunity to choose good, for evil. then we can easily lose this gift of freedom, therefore, let's say this period, which we call the young, independent ukrainian state of the 90s, the path of transition from post-soviet ukraine to a truly democratic state opened before us, and this period was very hard marked by several revolutions, when its people did not want to lose theirs independence, but took responsibility for his freedom. true freedom is always associated with responsibility. and here

it seemed that we all really want to use the fruits of that independence, but take responsibility for it, well, not everyone is. are ready, and here i think that the role of the church and churches in the process of transformation of ukraine is very important, in particular, our church immediately began to educate its people, to educate them to dignity and freedom, to responsibility for their state, i recall the words of my predecessor, his holiness lubomyra in the first in the days of the orange revolution, because some in power said that a crowd had come to the square, lubomyr had previously said, no, this is not a crowd, these are responsible citizens who not only

exercised their free and free democratic choice by coming to vote, these are citizens who are ready protect your voice. i remember his speech on the second maidan of dignity, and when and when this event happened, which we will call the revolution of dignity, well, this responsibility for dignity, it manifested itself at an even higher level than during the orange revolution. it is obvious what to educate citizens to realize their dignity, this is already a revolution. therefore, this process of transformation of ukraine from a post-soviet state to a free democratic state, as the construction of a society that is not only free from, but

free for, this process is still ongoing, i think that the war we are experiencing today is another stage of this process, but i have the feeling that all those previous years of building an independent ukraine were only... preparation for the exam, the real exam, unfortunately, was this terrible war, and watching how today my people the exam is, well, we all thank the lord god for the fact that our people today, even in the context of this tragedy, er, they are creating a political one. a nation of a new type, and our independence is being evaluated in a new way today not

only by ordinary ukrainians, not only by ukrainian society, but also by the world community. how do you explain, well, now about the explanation, first of all during these more than 30 years, and the moscow church had a huge impact on the minds of ukrainians, i will generally call it the moscow church, because... their patriarchs were commemorated there, i was there first alexy, then kirill, they exerted political influence, they exerted financial influence, they cultivated oligarchs, they cultivated politicians, they campaigned for certain politicians simply in their churches, and for a long time it was all perceived as, well, this is the choice of the people, in we have such a church, a ukrainian one, there is a conditionally orthodox church of the moscow patriarchate, and even full-scale... not an invasion of thousands of killed ukrainians, killed priests, by the way, the blessing

of the moscow church, the weapons with which ukrainians were killed, all this did not immediately give decision about the banning of this church in ukraine, why couldn't it all be born for so long, why couldn't they just unequivocally put an end to it, and besides, in your opinion, people who... will get rid of or will get rid of this moscow word, how long then they say, will his absence torment them, or they, if they want god, they will come to you, to epiphanius, to other clergymen, and listen to the word of god, everything will be fine, well, you see, the spiritual enslavement of ukraine began immediately, since the russian empire began to step behind step to colonize. territory of ukraine, starting from the 17th century.

the history of our church here is a vivid example: step by step, as soon as russia, the russian empire annexed new ukrainian lands, it began to destroy our church, and the final destruction of our church in the then russian... borders happened in 1839, and it is obvious that then russia tried to russify this territory with the help of various symbols, even monuments, everything possible was used in order to approve this, you know, this, well, simply murderous ideology. uh, orthodoxy, autocracy, nationalities, and even then,

the russian imperial government saw the church as an instrument of enslavement, and i am very sorry to say this, as a person who represents the church, it was such, i would say, a shameless instrumentalization of the church in the name of imperial interests, and then obviously that... the church, which even lost the right to have its own patriarch, turned into a department of the state machine. metropolitan andrey sheptytskyi called it kazon pravos. here there was obviously a minimum of spirituality and religion, and a maximum of loyalty to such a state control over the conscience of millions of people. for example, when this autocracy fell during the february revolution of 17th year,

i recall these statistics. when, for the first time during the first world war, russian soldiers at the front did not have the obligation to go to confession, because until that time everyone had to go to confession and receive a certificate of beneficence from the father, ugh, and here for the first time there is no tsar and such and such an obligation no, it was typical then in the 17th year before easter in the russian army. only a couple of percent went to confession soldiers, and this caused a huge collapse, then the ability of this church to control people's conscience, and then everything collapsed, so with the speed of a snowball dream, which simply washed away this church, then already in the bolshevik revolution. unfortunately, all those

consequences were fully felt by ukrainians. in particular, when stalin revived the instrument of manipulating the religious feelings of believers in the soviet union, reviving the russian orthodox church, actually concluding a cooperation agreement with it. having raised it, then it no longer became a tool tsarist, but communist regime. we were not surprised, but i remember my childhood. to see orthodox fathers with communist awards, and then the bishops of the russian orthodox church received state awards for closing churches, their own, well, we, then, the children of the persecuted underground church, looked at it, well , really with horror, and that's when ukraine became

independent, this independence began to demand certain. today we all remember and know the term decommunization, yes, it spontaneously began to happen in western ukraine, that fall of lenin took place back in the 90s, but, unfortunately, central-eastern, southern ukraine lived according to other rhythms, and that's when everything showed up. nial face of the russian government and the face of the moscow patriarchate in ukraine, then the ukrainian people demanded the decommunization of even moscow orthodoxy on the territory of ukraine. i do not want to go further into the analysis

of these processes, because i can be accused of interfering with the internal orthodox, and... some events, but these are more political events, an ordinary citizen of ukraine at a certain moment said to himself, well, enough, how much can we be fooled, and it is obvious that today the ukrainian state feels its duty, in particular in the conditions of a full-scale invasion, to take care of state security, even when it comes to threats to state security , which... therefore, come from the bosom of followers of the moscow orthodox church in ukraine, so i think we should all be honest, honest before our own conscience, before the lord god and before the ukrainian people. like us really if we seek god and want to live a spiritual

life, then this will be the road to liberation, to freedom. even to the decommunization of the church, even to the new demands that today 's ukrainian believers make of their spiritual leaders, i can say this not only about the believers of the orthodox churches, but also about the believers of our church, protestants and other churches, that is, we want to be a free people , and the church as an environment. liberation here must fulfill its mission in new historical circumstances, you know, i remember such two moments that i witnessed 90 there in my opinion, it was... it was the first year or so , somewhere around the very beginning of independence , alexei came to the second, in my opinion, and then he was the head of the russian church, and he was on

the black volga, and people were shouting out the moscow priest, this is one thing the slogans of the period of independence there, hetma kravchuk, it was one thing, because i went to all these rallies to the verkhovna rada, but the moscow priest was there and he was riding such a black volga and people were chasing him in the center of kyiv and they couldn't escape there. what was the cavalcade of these cars, and they you, that is, people chased the moscow opup, it was the beginning of the 90s, and then i remember 2000, god knows what year, when yanukovych was the president, when kirill arrived, he was there, and this golden crowd was marching the center of kyiv, specifically the moscow priest, during this time the moscow church managed to plant and impose itself so much that from the time when it was driven out, they turned into a church that went from the volodymyrivskaya hill there along... cyril in front and all that , and no one could do anything, they seemed to reign here, but you see, now we are reaching the time when they actually end their history in ukraine, the most important thing here is that i would like your

advice, i understand that this may not be your pasto now, it may be your flock, for people who have little they understand, maybe in politics, in state security, in the threat from this church, well, i say it's ukrainian, but we don't know there with moscow, they are not with moscow, so how to explain to people briefly and simply? why do you not need a moscow word? i think that our citizens of ukraine should feel it responsibility for your church, and for what you hear, probably also, and why you believe? if you feel responsible for your church. then that church will be able to change. i can proudly say about the active laymen of the ukrainian greek catholic church. and we are happy that

we, as a church, are changing, we are growing. we are looking for new ways, new forms, how to be a church, how to serve god and people, in new circumstances, we rejoice. having wise, active, conscious, responsible laity in our church, on whom we can rely rely on and today, the ukrainian greek-catholic church is not some cold hierarchical structure, it is a living network community, which today encompasses the network of presences. many countries of the world, we would very much like to share our experience of church life, even with our orthodox brothers, do not be afraid, do not be afraid

to be active, your fathers cannot be your slave owners, do not be slavish in front of spiritual officials, be able to be... open, free, only then you will be able to change that church, children, which you are, you think i think that lay people, ordinary orthodox believers, can be a catalyst for change in some churches today. unfortunately, it so happened that russia tried to undermine those strictures. soviet countries with the help of corruption, the same thing happened in ukraine, they believed that political corruption,

financing of various pro-russian political organizations and movements that were engaged in the restoration of various historical so -called events, this was soft power, such soft power, which they wanted to colonize anew, including. and ukraine, and here we saw that ee, it means that the moscow patriarchate very actively began to feel like a component of this whole ee corrupt system. we see that in russia there was a merger of corrupt secular power and church power, this symphony, it acquired such, well, finally, i would say, uh,... uh, uh, ugly forms, the fusion of the throne and the throne, it led to the final loss of the moral authority of the same church, even in russian society, and

this... was projected as a model of state-church relations for ukraine, it was about its moscow orthodoxy as the state church, and we saw how moscow politicians behaved and behave today in relation to this type of church existence, in particular also in ukraine, and here in... all those triumphal bosses, you know, about which you, about which you mention, and it has already started to fill everyone 's mind, i would like us to remember one such delicate reality today, today a huge number of faithful of the moscow patriarchate feel betrayed by their church, i talk to many of them, they feel that the one who

was supposed to be their father... became their enemy, the one who was supposed to care for them, finally betrayed them. this does not mean that those betrayed, wounded people will immediately look for another denomination, go to one or another church. i have a feeling now that many of those wounded, sick hearts, they will leave the church altogether. and ukraine may face a very powerful wave of secularization, i.e. a new kind of godlessness and atheism, just as it happened in tsarist russia after, that is, after the overthrow of the tsarist throne, and with it the power or force over the people, russian orthodox church. i would like

you to... explain to our viewers the issue of behavior, well here to a lesser extent the behavior of statements, actions of the head of the vatican, the head of the roman catholic church and the person who sits on the holy throne, because not all people understand why here as if to peace, there is somehow not such an unequivocal statement regarding condemnation. actions of russia, or again the same moscow church, there is some attempt to unite a ukrainian man and a russian woman or something else, to make a flash mob that seemed to give some idea of ​​reconciliation, and people think, is he for us or for whom, or how to explain it, well, as they say, just explain why, what is the difficulty today, maybe the role played by her m... pope

francis, and maybe those things that we do not see, but he also does, and they are very important in the humanitarian sphere and are important. well, the whole complexity, perhaps, today of the role and mission of, uh, the most holy father of the pope, as the universal bishop, is how to be a preacher of peace at a time when the third world war is starting in... in pieces, it's his words, that is, like today, let's say, to be the one who should serve reconciliation between peoples, when peoples start to fight among themselves, this is the complexity, maybe a certain tension between the local and the universal, obviously, that we feel that here in ukraine. many problems

of the whole world look different, we understand today that reconciliation between the aggressor and the victim is possible only when that aggressor stops, when the world community condemns him, when that aggressor is forced to compensate. take care of the wrong done, only then can there be a dialogue, a dialogue that, shall we say, one day, i hope, it will culminate in what we call healing, and from yes, reconciliation, so these are all very difficult questions, but let's let the pope be the pope, and...