Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko Saturday told a historic synod of Orthodox bishops that Kiev's national security depends on "spiritual independence" from Moscow.
Poroshenko addressed Ukrainian priests in Kiev's 11th-century Saint Sophia Cathedral, where the clerics met to work towards establishing an Orthodox church independent from Russia.
"This is a question of our Ukrainian national security, of our statehood," he said in a speech broadcast live on Ukrainian television.
Poroshenko, who has made an independent Church a campaign pledge ahead of an unpredictable election next year, said the state "did everything it could" towards the creation of a new independent church.
"Now the future of Ukraine depends on you," he told the bishops. "You have before you (the task) of choosing a primate." Several thousand Ukrainians rallied outside the cathedral throughout the day, awaiting the synod's decision.
"The people have been waiting for this. Our Ukrainian church should finally be independent from Moscow," 65-year-old Mykhaylo Khalepyk, who travelled to Kiev from the southern Kherson region, told AFP.
Vitaliya Popovych, also at the rally, said she hoped Ukraine would have a new independent church "that will have a pro-state position".
Several of the rally's participants said local churches throughout the country had encouraged parishioners to travel to the capital, even offering free transport.
Ties between Russia and Ukraine have broken down since Moscow annexed Crimea in 2014 following a pro-Western uprising in Kiev. This year, those tensions spilled over into the religious arena.
The synod will seek to realise a landmark decision by Istanbul-based Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I to recognise Ukraine's independence from the Russian Orthodox Church.
The ruling in October sparked fury in Moscow, which has overseen the Ukrainian branch of Orthodoxy for the last 332 years. It led the Russian Orthodox Church to cut all ties with the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople.
The synod aims to unite various branches of the Orthodox church in Ukraine into a single independent body.
But Ukraine's Moscow-loyal church said it would snub the event and banned its priests from going to the synod.
Despite that ban, a cleric of the church, Archbishop Kliment, told AFP he had recognised two bishops from the Moscow patriarchy on a photograph at the synod.
The meeting is dominated by the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kiev Patriarchate, the country's largest branch by number of believers.
Its leader, Patriarch Filaret, founded the church after the fall of the Soviet Union, but it remained unrecognised by other Orthodox churches until recently.
The smaller Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church is also taking part.
In Moscow, the Russian Orthodox Church dismissed the synod as uncanonical. Vladimir Legoida, a spokesman for the Moscow church, told Russian state television the Kiev synod had "no church, religious or evangelical meaning" and that it will have "no canonical consequences".
Ukraine's SBU security service warned this week that Russia was planning to stage "provocations" in the country as the clerics were meeting.
The SBU's deputy head Viktor Kononenko asked Ukrainians on Thursday to "refrain from holding any (political) gatherings during this period" so that they "could not be used by the aggressor to weaken or discredit our country".
Earlier this month, Ukrainian security services raided several Orthodox churches aligned with Russia as religious tensions grew between the two countries.
The Russian church and the Kremlin have both said they fear Kiev will use force to wrest Moscow-loyal churches and monasteries into its control.
Ahead of the council, Russia's Patriarch Kirill appealed to the Pope, the United Nations and others in the West to defend his church in Ukraine from "persecution".
Kiev officials have framed the Church issue as one of national security, with Poroshenko in the past referring to the branch loyal to the Moscow Patriarchate as a "threat".
The synod comes shortly after a fresh crisis that saw Russia seize three Ukrainian navy ships and arrest 24 sailors in the waters around Crimea.
If the attempt to create a unified Ukrainian Church is successful, it would be among the largest in the Orthodox world in terms of numbers of believers.
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