MAPA Creates New Map on Orthodox Church Changes

HURI's MAPA: The Digital Atlas of Ukraine team has produced a new web map in collaboration with the Religious Information Service of Ukraine (RISU) team at the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv. This work examines the transfer of Ukrainian Orthodox parishes under the jurisdiction of the Moscow Patriarchate to the newly created Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU). The transition process gained momentum after the official creation of the OCU at the Church Council in Kyiv in December 2018 and is continuing to accelerate. This map presents not only the geographic dimension of the process, but also how it has developed over time.

While HURI is not yet ready to publish a spatial or temporal analysis of the process, we invite people in academia and beyond to use the map as a tool for their own research and analysis. The map was designed by Kostyantyn Bondarenko on the basis of the information provided by RISU.

The Orthodox Church transition map represents just the beginning of a larger project on religion in Ukraine. The team is working on a new module for MAPA. It focuses on developments in the Ukrainian religious scene since the start of the Maidan protests and the Revolution of Dignity. The module, which is being designed by Kostyantyn Bondarenko (MAPA Project Manager) and conceptualized and produced by Viktoriya Sereda (Ukrainian Catholic University; HURI MAPA Fellow), utilizes polling data assembled by a project team at St. Gallen University. The project is expected to be completed in May 2019.

The interactive web map can be paused, searched, and more. Explore it here.