A Local Church at the Request of the President?

Petro Poroshenko’s Discourse on a National Ukrainian Orthodox Church in 2018

Authors

• Nico Lamminparras https://orcid.org/0009-0008-7321-0494

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.61560/ortodoksia.137218

Keywords:

Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko, Ukrainian Orthodox Church, discourse analysis

Abstract

The year 2018 was decisive for the Ukrainian Orthodoxy. President Poroshenko openly advocated and promoted autocephaly, the full independence of the Church. The new local Church amalgamated in 2019 from the Kyiv Patriarchate and the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church under the Moscow Patriarchate condemned the President’s activity as a politicization of spirituality and emphasized canonical justice.

Using discourse analysis with a focus on social context and word choice, I ezamine Poroshenko’s arguments and actions in his quest for a local Church, as well as the impact of political developments. Here, the (use of) language is not limited to describing phenomena, but presents an incidental, even alleged, version of them. Poroshenko’s ecclesiastical comments from 2018 provide material for the article.

Poroshenko had been raising autocephaly as a fatal question for Ukraine since spring 2018, in preparation for the 2019 elections. According to him, autocephaly would avert Russian influence and strengthen Ukraine’s sovereignty. However, due to his passionate activity the president had to assure the apolitical nature of the process and the neutrality of the state. Paradoxically, the issue only concerned the path to the Almighty – but it had to be a national one.

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