"For two decades, Ilya Solkan served as the parish priest in a tiny Ukrainian village outside the capital, Kyiv. He baptized babies, blessed marriages and conducted funerals. The Orthodox church stood at the heart of the village and Mr. Solkan was central to its life. ... Today, he is unemployed and has been ostracized from the village after parishioners booted him out last October for putting politics into his pastoral care.The removal of Mr. Solkan, a priest with no public profile beyond his home village, reflects the gradual rejection by much of Ukrainian society of a church that answers to Moscow — a process that has been accelerated by the war. Specifically, it speaks to the division between the two branches of Orthodox Christianity, the most predominant religion in Ukraine. ...”
Parishioners leaving church after a service in Blystavytsya, Ukraine. The village has switched its allegiance from the Russian Orthodox Church to the Ukrainian national church.
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