The Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) is planning a calendar reform, as a result of which the celebration of Christmas will be moved from January 7 to December 25. This was announced by the head of the OCU, Epiphany, in an interview with the Ukrainian edition of Gazeta.ua.
The decision will be made at the Bishops' Council in May, said Epiphanius. According to him, the decision will allow switching to a more accurate calendar and avoiding the gradual shift of fixed holidays.
Also in an interview, Epiphany described the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) as "the state department for religious affairs."
“They (the Russian Orthodox Church) now clearly and consistently support the criminal Russian aggression against our state in every possible way. In addition, they are a propaganda mouthpiece that promotes the murderous ideology of the "Russian world", which has become one of the foundations on which this aggression was prepared. It is a pity that they gave preference not to the Gospel, but to anti-Christian Kremlin narratives. This is the path of sin, the path to nowhere."
Now the OCU, like the ROC, uses the Julian calendar, according to which Christmas is celebrated on January 7th. According to the Gregorian calendar, Christmas falls on December 25, and is also celebrated by Catholics, Lutherans, and Protestants.
In May 2022, the council of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC), chaired by the head of the church, Metropolitan Onufry, decided on the complete independence and independence of the UOC from the Moscow Patriarchate. To date, confrontation continues in Kyiv around the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra, from which the Ukrainian authorities are trying to expel the monks of the UOC, who continue to classify themselves as members of the Moscow Patriarchate. On April 1, 2023, the Kiev court sent Metropolitan Pavel, the governor of the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra, under house arrest. He is suspected of inciting inter-religious hatred (Article 161 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine) and justifying Russia's armed aggression (Article 436 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine). The Primate of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill (Vladimir Gundyaev), commented on the decision of the UOC on complete independence and independence from the Moscow Patriarchate, stating that this is the influence of "spirits of malice in high places." Gundyaev himself justifies the war in Ukraine.
In 2018, with the support of President Petro Poroshenko, the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) was created on the basis of two churches – the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (UAOC) and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kiev Patriarchate (UOC-KP). She received autocephaly by decision of Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople, as a result, the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) recognized it as impossible to “further stay in Eucharistic communion” with the Patriarchate of Constantinople.