Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Canada refuses OCA relics

The letter itself is available here (PDF). It is very direct and pulls no punches. I recommend reading the letter itself in addition to the below summary.

For example: "The core of the problem is that we are being offered sacred objects from our spiritual and ancestral homeland, Ukraine, for veneration by those who have historically been oppressors of the Ukrainian Nation and the Ukrainian Church...Our historical memory of the relationship with the Tsarist and Soviet regimes and the Russian Orthodox Church includes political enslavement, russification, execution, deportation, ethnic cleansing, various famines, including the Great Famine, the Holodomor-Genocide of 1932-33, repression of Ukrainian ecclesiastical traditions and numerous bans on Ukrainian-language religious and secular publications."

If the russification comment makes no sense to you, I will mention that much is said about the emphasis of using the local language in the Orthodox Church as compared to the Latinocentric West. It should be remembered that the Georgian Church and the Carpatho-Russians (as well as others) were pressed on very hard by the Russian Church to Russify and one of the non-Canonical Ukrainian bodies (UAOC, UOC-KP) most common complaints is that the UOC-MP opposes the use of Ukrainian.

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(RISU) - Archbishop of Winnipeg and Metropolitan of Canada, Yurii (Kalishchuk), addressed his flock to explain why the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Canada did not accept the offer from the Archdiocese of Canada of the Orthodox Church in America to make available to his church the Relics of the Holy Great Prince Volodymyr of Kyiv that have been in Canada for some weeks.

Metropolitan Yurii said it was an act to show the church's unacceptance of the position of the Moscow Patriarchate and determination to defend the truth about the Ukrainian Church.

According to the press service of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Canada, the address reads that the relics of the great Ukrainian saint "are accompanied with supporting literature such as liturgical texts that reference Russia and an informational article entitled 'Holy Equal-to-the-Apostles Great Prince Vladimir, in Holy Baptism Basil, the Enlightener of the Russian Land Commemorated on July 15,' written from a pro-Moscow, Tsarist and Soviet historical point of view." According to the metropolitan, its intention seems to be to give the impression that the historical personages and events presented there bear a direct relationship to present-day "Russia" "in order to usurp for the Moscow Empire that he was building, the history and legacy of Kyivan Rus."

The address says that the UOC of Canada cannot view without suspicion and skepticism any proposal "either directly from the Moscow Patriarchate or through its affiliate, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate)," but can only view it as "an attempt to pull the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Canada into its sphere of influence or to falsely represent that such is the case, and thereby create or exacerbate divisions among us."

"The present Russian state and the Moscow Patriarchate have had 19 years, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, to disassociate themselves from the policy of persecution and repression of Ukraine. . . . The Moscow Patriarchate should have acknowledged the transfer of the Church of Ukraine (1686) into its jurisdiction as un-canonical and, together with the Ecumenical Patriarchate, cooperated to recognize the Ukrainian Church as an Autocephalous Church in a sovereign state," reads the address.

The metropolitan stressed that the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Canada "will not agree to have its name associated with the propagation of tendentious interpretations of the history of the peoples of Ukraine and Russia, nor to collaborate with those propagating political ideologies and ecclesiastical projects, which are detrimental to the Ukrainian people, the Ukrainian state, and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church."