CALENDAR REFORM OF THE ORTHODOX CHURCH OF UKRAINE (2023)

Abstract

On September 1, 2023, the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) transitioned to the Revised Julian calendar, with 99% support from its faithful. This article analyzes the circumstances in Ukraine from 2022 to 2025 that prompted the OCU to reform its liturgical calendar. It outlines the prerequisites for the reform, the challenges faced during its implementation, and how these challenges were overcome by the clergy of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine. The article systematizes sociological research on the calendar reform, which reveals a strong public demand to abandon the Julian calendar and celebrate religious feasts according to the Revised Julian system. The success of the reform was largely driven by Ukrainians’ desire for self-identification amid Russia’s full-scale invasion. The active role of the Primate of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine – His Beatitude Metropolitan Epiphanius of Kyiv and All Ukraine – along with bishops, priests, and laypeople, contributed significantly to the reform’s success. Nevertheless, a calendar divide remains within Ukrainian Orthodoxy. On the territory of Ukraine, there still operates a structure of the Russian Church known as the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC), which largely continues to use the old Julian calendar for liturgical purposes and ignored public calls for calendar reform. For the ROC-affiliated UOC, the Julian calendar serves as a symbolic bond with the Russian Church. At the same time, the Russian Orthodox Church attributes to its liturgical calendar a purpose beyond simply linking dates to events, investing it with ideological significance. Therefore, the continued presence of the Moscow Patriarchate in Ukraine remains one of the most serious challenges to the implementation of the reform. The article pays particular attention to the sociological and cultural factors that facilitated the reform and analyzes its outcomes. The research offers a comprehensive understanding of the 2023 calendar reform of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine as a theologically sound, historically timely, and pastorally justified decision that responded to the needs of society. A limiting factor for scholarly analysis is the currently small number of academic studies on the 2023 calendar reform in Ukraine. However, this also highlights the relevance of the topic and the need for further scholarly reflection.