At the beginning of November 2023, posts spread across social networks that in one of the churches of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) they allegedly celebrated Halloween and sang about Satan. Proof of such a service is a short video. We have verified the authenticity of this video.
The 11-second recording shows a church choir singing, and the video caption in Ukrainian reads: “Celebrating Halloween. My favorite is the Holy Trinity Cathedral in Lutsk.” Authors of the Telegram channel "Notes from a veteran“(136,000 views at the time of writing this analysis) they were outraged by what was happening in the video: “The Russian Orthodox Church has not seen such mockery and blasphemy since the time of the last persecutions at the beginning of the 20th century. The video shows the “celebration” of American Halloween in the Orthodox Church of the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine. The decomposition of the Ukrainian pseudo-society and the madness continues.” On the social networks of the TV channel "Constantinople“The video was commented on as follows: “The OCU sect celebrates Halloween: Orthodox churches continue to be desecrated in Ukraine.” In the channel "Talipov 𝐎𝐧𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐞"(12,000 views; post deleted) clarified that the service allegedly took place in one of the "churches seized from the UOC (Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate. - Ed.) churches." Often in such publications addthat Ukraine is integrating Western paganism into Orthodoxy.
Similar posts appeared in other Telegram channels, including “Observer"(231,000 views), "Kot Kostyan - official channel"(104,000), "Release the Kraken!"(83,000), "Sexton"(54,000), "Boiling water" (53,000), "Freshness"(51,000), "Russia now"(44,000), "Donetsk Z" (38,000), "New 🅉 Ukraine" (37,000), "Karnaukhov" (32,000), "Batkovich" (31,000), "World conspiracy"(30,000), "Bake"(30,000), "Skeptic"(29,000), "Kremlin Mockingbird"(24,000), "Russia"(22,000), "People's Russia"(21,000), "Denazification UA" (18,000), "Rusich"(16,000), "Alexander Skubchenko" (14,000), "Felix's Notes"(13,000), "Lightning"(13,000), "Kryminforum 🇿 🇴 🇻" (11,000) and "Patriot's truth"(10,000). In addition, public pages on VKontakte wrote about the video (examples here, here And here), users TikTok and social networks X (formerly Twitter), as well as on some news websites.
The earliest publication with a viral video and a mention of Halloween that “Verified” was able to track appeared on November 1 at 14:10 Moscow time in the Telegram channel “Sheikh Tamir"(117,000 views) - it has already been done several dozen times mentioned in our analyzes and often became the primary source of dissemination of misinformation. However, a little over an hour later (at 15:21) the same video appeared on the channel “Bear"(8000 views), where it was signed like this: “From a subscriber: “Have the schismatics of the Ukrainian church gone completely crazy? On Instagram* I saw a video of how they held a service in honor of this stupid Halloween... Listen to what they are singing! About Satan!”" At the same time, a link to the original post on Instagram was not provided, and “Verified” was unable to detect such a publication. Previously "Bear" also was becoming the hero of our materials.
The priest of the Russian Orthodox Church Pavel Ostrovsky was one of the first to call the video about the celebration of Halloween in the Ukrainian church a fake. In his telegram on the afternoon of November 1st he wrote: “This is fake. The sound is different. I speak based on many years of experience singing in a choir and being a choir director. People are clearly singing at those moments when there is a pause in the sound.” Over the next few days, Ukrainian fact checkers from Ukrinform, StopFake And Gwara Media.
Using a reverse screenshot search in service Google Lens can determine that the original source of a viral video is Facebook*-account for the Church of the Entry of the Blessed Virgin Mary into the Temple, which is located in Lviv, that is, the video was not filmed in the Holy Trinity Cathedral in Lutsk. Moreover, this church is not Orthodox, but Greek Catholic. The original recording is 45 seconds long. was published It's still October 8th, and Halloween celebrations have to at the end of the same month. The viral video is a fragment starting and ending at approximately 00:28 and 00:40, respectively.
At the same time, the original song does not sound like the one heard in the viral recording. In the post of the Church of the Entry into the Temple of the Blessed Virgin Mary it says: “Another musical gift for “Mothers in Prayer” from the Oranta church chamber choir.” In the profile of this choir on the same day, October 8, there was posted A recording of the performance taken from a different angle. In the caption to the video indicatedwhat does it sound like song “How good it is in your temple, Mother of God.”
In a comment to Ukrinform, a church representative emphasizedthat the video distributed on Telegram is fake, and the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church does not support the celebration of Halloween. “On October 8, our church celebrated the 15th anniversary of the parish community “Mothers in Prayer.” In the video, our parish choir sings a song in praise of the Blessed Virgin Mary, not a song in honor of Halloween,” he explained.
Thus, the video distributed on social networks is fake. The original video was filmed long before Halloween and not in the Orthodox cathedral in Lutsk, but in the Greek Catholic church in Lviv. At the same time, unknown persons changed the original audio track. Moreover, on October 31, 2023, on the social networks of the OCU posted publication, which reported that Halloween is not a holiday and “definitely has nothing to do with Orthodoxy.”
*Russian authorities think Meta Platforms Inc., which owns the social networks Instagram and Facebook, is an extremist organization; its activities in Russia are prohibited.
Cover photo: social networks / @vvedenya.syhiv
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