On the network there was a news that the Orthodox Church of Ukraine allegedly canonized Stepan Bandera. We checked whether these messages are true.

June 20, 2022 Media, Telegram channels And Users social networks began to disseminate the news about Stepan Bandera’s reckoning to the face of saints. A photo of the decree on the canonization of Bandera with the signature of the Metropolitan of Kyiv and All Ukraine Epiphanius is attached to the messages. The document says that the decision on canonization was made on June 20, 2022 at the Bishop Cathedral of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (PCU).

*Group "Russian Bulletin | Polish Russia "*

The published document, like the news itself, immediately raised a lot of questions. One of the first to pay attention to inconsistencies in the document was Andrei Kuraev, the protodiacon of the Russian Orthodox Church, deprived The Holy San in 2020 by the decision of the diocesan court. Kuraev published in his “Live magazine” fast With the heading "Orthodox priests today scare each other with such a fake." Kuraev noted several implausible details: “And they do not care to the fact that the cathedrals emit acts, and not decrees and that the size of the icon is not indicated in any canonization act. And it’s not at all difficult to find the PCU website and not find such a decree and such a cathedral there. ”

Indeed, on the official website of PC in sectiondedicated to the bishop's cathedrals, there is no information about the cathedral on June 20, 2022. Dates of the last four cathedrals - December 2018, December 2019, December 2020 and May 2022. Judging by what attention the PCU press service pays to each of the annual cathedrals, it is unlikely that the event could go unnoticed on June 20. There is no news on the site and news about Stepan Bandera, although usually the press service Publishing Materials on the canonization of new saints.

*Bishop Cathedral May 24, 2022. Source: PCU site*

Resource "The Spiritual Front of Ukraine" I turned it Attention to the fact that Stepan Bandera was a Grecokatolik and cannot be canonized by the Orthodox Church. But this nuance did not embarrass the Russian media, which They wrote off This is the general absurdity of the decisions of the “Ukrainian regime”, but not on the possible fake of the document.

If you read the text of the decree, you can find several stylistic errors.

The author of the document writes “Zarakhuvati Yogo to the face of the saints”, speaking of the construction of saints in the face. The verb "Zarakhuvati" means to count something (for example, experience). In the official Decisions PCU is used by the phrase “to the face of the saints”, that is, “reckon”.
“Getting a decorous” is translated from Ukrainian approximately as “enters into force with the present” or “from modernity”. From today's day it would be a “sabdinish day”.
In the decrees Used The imperative mood and describe the points that require execution. And the Bandera document only informs of the decision.

The next group of errors concerns the formalities of the canonization process and the execution of such documents.

Usually saints canonize Resolution The Holy Synod of the PC on the recommendation of the Synodal Commission on the canonization of the saints. Nevertheless, the Bandera document is not mentioned, and the decision was allegedly made at the Bishop Cathedral, and not at a meeting of the Holy Synod.
Another shortage is to write the title of Metropolitan in the signature. In all the official officials we found documents It is written "Metropolitan Kyivsky, I.Sai, the Primate of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine." The Bandera document indicates only the first half of the title.
The seal also does not correspond to the one that is put on the signature of the Metropolitan. And the signature in the decree itself is slightly different from the true signature, which can be found on the official documents.

The ordinal number of the Decree - No. 635 - also raises doubts. We found decrees of Metropolitan Epiphanius for April 2022 have serial numbers 11 (for April 11) and 22 (for April 25th). In order to gain more than six hundred decrees in two months (from April to June), the metropolitan would have to be issued 10 decrees per day.

The sketch of the icon of St. Bandera turned out to be a collage of three images. We managed to find a drawing and wooden frame on site Sverdlovsk woodc cutter Igor Ilyin. The icon itself - Job American icon painter William Hart McNILS 2008. The original icon depicts the blessed martyr of the Roman Catholic Church Franz JaherstetterTo whom the authorities of Nazi Germany were chopped off for refusing to serve in the Nazi army. Bandera's face is most likely taken from Articles About Bandera in Wikipedia.

And finally, digital analysis Images showed that some elements were glued in a photo editor (for example, a seal).

In the end, it is worth mentioning that the press service of the PCU has been commenting on the Ukrainian Factics-CHILD PORTAL Stopfake, calling the news about the canonization of Bandera fake: “To create this picture, rough editing was used, and its content is absurd and illiterate from the point of view of the language and traditions of canonization. Even its very form of writing, like the content, directly indicate a fake. ” Thus, there is no doubt that the news about the canonization of Stepan Bandera and the document attached to it - fake.