KIEV: A historic council of Orthodox bishops in Kiev has created a new Ukrainian church independent from Russia, President Petro Poroshenko announced on Saturday.

The announcement came after Ukrainian priests held a historic synod in Kiev’s 11th-century Saint Sophia Cathedral to work towards establishing an Orthodox church independent from Moscow.

“It happened,” Poroshenko told a crowd awaiting the council’s decision in Kiev. “The doors of our church are open to all.” He said the event will “go down in history” as the day Ukraine “finally received [its] independence form Russia”.

The Ukrainian leader, who has made an independent church a campaign pledge ahead of an unpredictable election next year, told the bishops that the state “did everything it could” towards the creation of the church.

Ties between Russia and Ukraine have broken down since Moscow annexed Crimea in 2014 following a pro-Western uprising in Kiev. This year, those tensions spilled over into the religious arena. The synod sought to realise a landmark decision by Istanbul-based Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I to recognise Ukraine’s independence from the Russian Orthodox Church.

The ruling in October sparked fury in Moscow, which has overseen the Ukrainian branch of Orthodoxy for the last 332 years. It led the Russian Orthodox Church to cut all ties with the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople.

The meeting was dominated by the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kiev Patriarchate, the country’s largest branch by number of believers. Its leader, Patriarch Filaret, founded the church after the fall of the Soviet Union, but it remained unrecognised by other Orthodox churches until recently.

Published in Dawn, December 16th, 2018