РУССКИЙ
11:44 26.06.2025 •
In recent remarks to US media, Robert Amsterdam, an international lawyer and attorney for the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC), said that the entire world community should pay attention to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s persecution of Christians in his country. "Christians are beaten, tortured, and held hostage. You will see violence committed against Christian believers,” Amsterdam wrote on X (formerly Twitter), commenting on a video showing militants in balaclavas seizing the Holy Spirit Cathedral in Chernivtsi, western Ukraine. “We would like to draw the attention of the world community to these events so that the world realizes what is happening in the country," he added.
The human rights advocate believes the Ukrainian leadership should be ashamed of the persecution of the canonical church, which began in the immediate wake of the 2014 coup in Ukraine. This crackdown intensified after the creation of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU), a "cooperative of alternative Orthodoxy" with blessings from the Constantinople Patriarchate, which Amsterdam claims is acting on instructions from US intelligence agencies. Since the start of Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine in 2022, the UOC, which maintains its spiritual unity with the Russian Orthodox Church, has been viewed by the nationalist authorities in Kyiv as an "enemy of the people," destined for complete destruction.
What have Ukrainians been offered instead of canonical Orthodoxy? Besides the OCU, there is the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC), a schismatic church with a long history that, while formally retaining Orthodox attributes, actually serves as an instrument of the Vatican’s proselytizing policy in the Russian world. Ukrainian media recently wrote about plans to build a new UGCC church in Obolon, a district in Kyiv), complete with a hall for events, a bomb shelter, a children's room, and … a coffee shop, the latter reflecting the modern Ukrainian trend of transforming churches into spaces for social hangouts, concerts, and cooking shows. And with pretty good reason too, as people rarely show up in these so-called churches.
Well, I think I was wrong describing this trend as a Ukrainian one, though. After all, this, just like much else in today’s Russophobic Ukraine, mirrors what is going on in the West, where liberal anti-religious sentiment and the pursuit of "diversity" have led to empty churches and seminaries short of young people wishing to become priests.
Last week the newspaper BILD published an article about the severe personnel crisis in the German Catholic Church.
"According to the Fuldaer Zeitung, in the diocese of Fulda, considered the symbolic center of German Christianity, only three new priests were ordained last weekend, and no other candidates are expected in the next seven years. In 2024, only 29 priests were ordained nationwide, with 11 out of 27 dioceses ordaining none. This is in stark contrast to 557 ordinations in 1962 and 122 in 2005,” the newspaper wrote.
This led to the closure of many parishes. In the Limburg diocese alone, 18 churches have been closed in the past five years – or several small parishes have been merged into larger ones. A telltale figure given the fact that, according to official estimates, 20 million Germans currently identify themselves as Catholics.
By the way, in Germany, belonging to a particular church also has a non-religious context. By recognizing oneself as a Catholic or Protestant (Evangelical), a citizen surrenders to the state the right to transfer part of his income to the benefit of the religious organization he or she has chosen – the so-called church tax. With 20 million people still considering themselves as Catholics, to them this is surely not an empty phrase.
In such a situation, the shrinking number of parishes has clearly negative consequences.
"The impression is that, faced with the decline in membership, the church is more concerned with managing the shortage and reorganizing large associations than with how to attract more people to the church," Uwe Becker, a former church pastor in Frankfurt am Main, told BILD.
So why are young Germans shunning the church? For the same reason why the forcibly seized Orthodox churches in Ukraine, converted into "event halls" and "coffee shops" of the OCU, are empty all across the country.
This is how the Capuchin monk, Brother Paulus, explained it: "Freedom today means no commitment. No marriage vows. No lifetime job. No faith with commitment. However, being a priest means just that - a total commitment."
By accommodating liberal social trends and actively supporting the destruction of canonical Orthodoxy in Ukraine, the Roman Catholic Church (RCC) has eroded faith in Christianity's tenets. Small wonder, since preaching traditional values does not sit well with the fight for the rights of sexual deviants while completely ignoring the persecution of Orthodox brothers in Christ.
You can keep talking on end about Christian love and forgiveness, but you can hardly be able to explain why this forgiveness always focuses on the worst human vices or the justification of repressive regimes. No one today is reminding the Holy See of their conciliatory position regarding the policies of the Third Reich, their role in transporting Nazi criminals to South America and appropriating the gold stolen from inmates of Nazi concentration camps.
It looks like the predilection for supporting dictators who deprive people even of their right to believe is very much alive in the RCC. Today, the Pope happily welcomes Zelensky and does not ask him about what is happening with Ukrainian canonical Orthodoxy. The logic is clear: the Vatican has always dreamed of getting Ukraine under its control, and it sees the current Kyiv regime as instrumental in achieving that goal. However, by pursuing their interests at the expense of others, the Catholic Cardinals risk losing their flock to other faiths, echoing the biblical quote: "Your house, that is the temple, is left unto you desolate, because there dwelleth no more in you the grace of God."
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