President Petro Poroshenko of Ukraine joined thousands on the streets of Kiev today (July 28, 2018) on an anniversary marking the start of the conversion of Ukrainians to Christianity, amid a push to remove Russian influence in Ukrainian affairs, according to the Reuters website.
Poroshenko wants to establish a national "autocephalous" (self-governing) church in the majority Orthodox Christian country, which he says would be vital to tackling meddling by Moscow.
Currently, religious divisions in Ukraine include a Moscow Patriarchate and a Kiev Patriarchate, as well as the UGCC (Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church), which conducts its Roman Catholic church services in the Eastern Rite tradition. Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople -- the leader of the Eastern Orthodox Church -- is working towards achieving autocephaly for the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, according to his representative, Metropolitan Emmanuel, in his address to today's anniversary celebration.
Today, Poroshenko addressed priests, officials, lawmakers and members of the public on a hill in Kiev by a statue of Vladimir the Great, the prince who accepted Greek Orthodox Christianity as the official religion of the Ukrainian/Russian region in the year 988.
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