I have been re-reading 'Witness' by Josyp Terelya in light of the invasion of Ukraine. I noted that the local Orthodox hierarchy ignored or officially rejected the many reports of Marian apparitions and other inexplicable phenomena witnessed by thousands in the Ukraine in 1987. There appear to have been several reasons for this rejection, none very spiritually edifying from their point of view. The first and fairly obvious one was that if Orthodoxy were the true religion, then Our Lady would not be appearing only at sites associated with Catholicism, so they must be hoaxes/mass hallucinations. Secondly, the Orthodox had an accommodation with the Soviet authorities and enjoyed some tolerance denied to Catholics. So, any acceptance that the apparitions/phenomena were true would jeopardise that relationship and the physical safety of the hierarchy/clergy who said so. So it was far easier to take the official line that these were mass hallucinations/hoaxes. Also there arose a threat to their own membership numbers since many Orthodox witnesses to these events, converted to Catholicism. I was aware that, since independence, there have been disputes about the independence of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church from the ROC but had not realised the complexity of this situation which is neatly summarised in the following video. It is well established that not only the ROC but Putin is deeply invested in terminating the independence of the UOC and bringing it back under Moscow's control but the ROC (and Putin) appear to have the ultimate aim of having the head of the ROC recognised as leader of worldwide Orthodoxy since theirs is, by a significant number, the largest of the Orthodox Churches. Indeed the ROC has recently withdrawn its recognition of the Patriarchate of Constantinople as primate of all the patriarchs which has stood since the schism with Catholicism in 1054. The Orthodox Church's Cold War over Ukraine - YouTube
