The key word of the declaration's preamble, 'demoscovization', denotes the liberation of Ukrainian Orthodoxy from Moscow's influence. The authors chose as their reference point the era of Petro Mohyla, the seventeenth-century Kyiv metropolitan who reformed the church and educational life of Kyiv. The document describes that epoch as a time of conciliarity, democracy, an elected clergy, religious tolerance, European orientation and independence from secular authority. All these features are listed as goals to which the church must return.
The subtlety is that this is not about a new doctrine. The declaration states outright that dogma is not changing and no new hierarchy is being created. What is changing is the organisation of the church's life. The political meaning is clear from recent history. In 2015 the Synod of the APC in Moscow released Metropolitans Oleh (Vedmedenko) and Volodymyr (Mocharnyk), who had announced the founding of the Ukrainian People's Apostolic Church, recognised that structure as a sister church and transferred the Ukrainian Metropolis to autocephalous self-government. The 2019 declaration became the next step after that break.
Twelve points
The twelve points cover the whole of church life. The first three concern organisation: genuine conciliarity and decentralisation on the model of church brotherhoods, eucharistic revival and renewal of parish life. The fourth and fifth points address the flock: catechisation of 'nominal' believers and a quality translation of the liturgy into Ukrainian. The sixth point proclaims Christ-centredness and a 'new evangelisation'. Here the declaration also asserts that 85% of nominal Christians have never read the Bible. There is no reference in the text to a study that would confirm this figure, so it should be taken as the authors' claim.
The eighth and ninth points concern transparency. The declaration demands accountability, elected offices, a church court and open parish budgets, as well as social service. The tenth point proposes a reform of theological education and the creation of an Open Orthodox University. The eleventh permits priests to have a secular profession, which for the Orthodox tradition is a notable departure from previous practice. The twelfth point is devoted to dialogue: eucharistic unity first of all with churches of the apostolic tradition, and openness to non-Christian religions. The declaration reduced its formula for social service to a single phrase, which it quotes itself: 'menshe pyshnykh budivel, blyzhche do liudei', that is, fewer grand buildings, closer to the people.
The Maidan as a model
The seventh point became the most political. The declaration demands rejection of the 'symphony' of church and state, that is, of the model in which the church relies on the authorities and receives support from them. As an example the authors cite the Maidan: in their wording, 'Vlastyvo ukrainskyi idealnyi pryklad takoi pozytsii — stanovyshche Tserkvy na Maidani', which translates as: the best Ukrainian example of such a position is the church's stance on the Maidan.
The connection with the Maidan was not merely declarative for Ukrainian Orthodoxy. Archbishop Stefan (Nehrebetsky), who from 2015 headed the Kyiv Metropolis of the APC, was a member of the Maidan's Spiritual Council. As Tyzhden wrote, on 1 December 2013 he stopped the crowd at the Kyiv City Council building. On 5 January 2014 Archpriest Serhii Vutianov brought the icons of the Kyiv community to the square, and on 19 February the tent-church burned down, but the icons were saved. The work of the Spiritual Council ended in late January and February 2014, after the deaths of Nihoyan and Zhyznevsky, when negotiations with the authorities, in which Klitschko and representatives of Berkut took part, broke down. The 2019 declaration records this experience as a principle: the church must not be part of the state machine, but must be alongside the people in difficult moments.
The 2019 council did not remain only on paper. It adopted a new name for the church, the UAPC, and incorporated the jurisdiction of Archbishop Lorenzo of Italy. Later, in November 2021, Oleh (Vedmedenko), who had stood at the origins of the unification and had been primate of the UNAPC since 2015, died. On 19 February 2022 the bishops of the APC of Ukraine, Russia and the USA issued a joint address, and this was one of the last documents in which church structures tried to speak together.
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