“An official appeared between man and God”: what can the adoption of the law on religious communities in Ukraine lead to?

Ukraine has adopted a law on the jurisdiction of religious communities, according to which parishioners will be able to make changes to the charter of religious organizations. According to President Petro Poroshenko, the document is aimed at ensuring the “bloodless” transition of the parishes of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church into a new structure - the so-called Ukrainian Local Orthodox Church. Experts believe that the law can be a catalyst for the mass seizure of temples of the UOC-MP.

The Verkhovna Rada adopted a law on changing the jurisdiction of religious communities. According to its provisions, the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) may lose its churches as a result of voting by the parishioners. The document was adopted by 229 deputies with the necessary minimum of 226 votes, local media reported.

By law, parishioners will be able to make changes to the statutes of religious organizations and change their jurisdiction if at least two thirds of the members of the parish vote for this.

Petro Poroshenko during a prayer service at St. Michael’s Cathedral in Zhytomyr stated that the adoption of this law will allow the parishes of the canonical UOC to go to a new local church "without blood."

“The Verkhovna Rada adopted a law that defines the transition mechanism. What is it done for? In order not to shed blood. The law should settle everything, ”the Ukrainian president said.

He also stated that more than 100 parishes of the canonical church are already ready to move into a new church structure.

The head of the canonical press service of the UOC Vasily Anisimov, commenting on the decision of the Ukrainian parliamentarians, noted that the law is criminal and will be challenged in court.

“This is all criminal and illegal, we hope that everyone will bear responsibility for this not only in the Last Judgment before God, but also in the district court for violating the law and the rights of believers,” said Anisimov.

According to Ukrainian lawyers, the law is registered very cunningly, and it is impossible to fulfill all its provisions.

“For the year, all religious organizations must re-register their charters, and for this, it will be necessary to notarize the signature of each member from several thousand communities and even provide all the information about a person. Communities will need to get a certificate of their charter, but so far in Ukraine no one has issued such documents. And who will give out is unknown. But if this paper does not exist, the state body has the right to refuse to register a religious organization. Interestingly, the government has not been created yet. All this testifies to the fact that in a year in Ukraine there can be no disloyal authorities of church organizations, ”said the director of a large Ukrainian law firm in an interview with RT.

"The authorities really can not wait"

The bill was passed in violation of all possible rules and regulations, said a source in the RT Party Party Petro Poroshenko.

“First, we received the text of the document an hour before the vote and did not even have time to read it. Secondly, the document was accepted from the second time and the deputies were literally persuaded to support it. It can be seen that the authorities are very impatient to completely say goodbye to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate. Moreover, everything was done so rudely that it surprised even supporters of the new Ukrainian church, ”the Ukrainian parliamentarian said in an interview with RT.

With this law, the country's leadership can set up representatives of all denominations in Ukraine against themselves, the representative of the Popular Front Party said in an interview with RT.

“They will not be able to register their religious organizations either. Imagine what they think about Ukraine in the world. This is wild, because now a Ukrainian official has appeared between man and God, ”he says.

Such a bill is possible only in Ukraine, according to a RT source in the Self-Help party. According to him, the “voluntary transition” of the parishes can turn into bloodshed.

“Imagine that you could not register a religious organization, but people go there. They are forcibly forbidden to do this? Will the military come and demolish the temple? Worshipers will defend their church with sticks in their hands. And there can be a lot of such confrontations, ”the interlocutor of RT stressed.

"Persecution of the UOC"

Despite Poroshenko’s assurances of a “bloodless” transition of parishes, several UOC churches were captured by radicals and supporters of the new church structure in Ukraine before the law was passed.

Thus, on January 13, supporters of a new church structure prevented representatives of the UOC-Orthodox Church from holding a liturgy in the St. Michael’s Church in Volyn Oblast, threatening the clergy and parishioners. Then the schismatics changed the locks in the temple.

“The clergy and believers of the UOC, who came to prayer, were forced to go to a nearby village,” said Archpriest Oleg Tochinsky, spokesman for the regional diocese.

The next day, January 14, a similar incident occurred in the Zhytomyr region, where schismatics, with the participation of local authorities and radicals from the Freedom party, seized the St. Nicholas Church. Parishioners and clerics were also threatened by invaders.

In the evening of the same day, an unknown person set fire to a building in the complex of the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra. The investigation claims that he was committed by a man in a state of intoxication.

Rostislav Ischenko, President of the Center for System Analysis and Forecasting, told the RT that the Ukrainian government had attacked the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate before the adoption of such laws.

“There are persecutions of the UOC and have led to the destabilization of the situation in Ukraine, increasing the risk of a serious intra-state conflict on religious grounds, literally a civil war. But these consequences came long before the adoption of this law, ”Ischenko said.

At the same time, the next stage of this process could be a massive seizure of the temples of the canonical church in Ukraine, the expert said.

Freedom without conscience

The adoption of a new law and a new wave of seizure of churches was preceded by another event - the entry at the end of last year by virtue of the so-called rules on renaming religious organizations within the framework of the law “On the freedom of conscience and religious organizations.”

A statement published on the website of Petro Poroshenko, said that these norms affect "religious organizations that have a structural center in the territory of the aggressor country that occupied the territory of Ukraine or committed a military attack against it"

Kiev-Pechersk Lavra in Kiev
RIA News

In addition, the Ukrainian authorities announced their intention to conduct an inspection of the UOC church charter through the Ministry of Culture. The check should establish whether the activities of the canonical church are regulated by a “different state”.

Split history

Divisive sentiments were present in Ukraine since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and received a new round after the coup d'état that took place in 2014. The parishes and temples of the canonical church were subjected to regular attacks by extremists and radicals. In October 2018, the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople restored in its communion the head of the schismatics, Metropolitan Philaret, who was deprived of his rank and excommunicated from the Russian Orthodox Church as early as the 1990s.

In mid-December, a so-called unifying council was held in Kiev, which was attended by representatives of two non-canonical churches of Ukraine, the Patriarchate of Constantinople and Petro Poroshenko. At the beginning of January 2019, the Holy Synod of the Patriarchate of Constantinople signed the Tomos, which grants independence to the PCC established at the Council. However, after the text of the tomos was made public, many noticed that the new religious structure was in fact subordinate to the Patriarchate of Constantinople.

Poroshenko congratulates Metropolitan Epiphania on the election of the main new religious structure
Reuters

"The state will intervene"

The adoption of the law on the jurisdiction of religious communities is a blatant attempt to destroy the Russian Orthodox Church on the territory of Ukraine, said in a conversation with RT the deputy director of the Center for Ukrainian Studies and Belarusian Studies at Moscow State University. Mv Lomonosov Bogdan Bezpalko.

“In fact, since the 1990s, seizure methods have been used: either with the help of militants or with the help of administrative bodies, legislative bodies will be used now, including to promote this kind of laws.

Now the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate will be forced to change its name, change legal documents, after which it may be denied any right to register at all, the right to worship in a number of churches, ”explained the expert.

Bezpal'ko believes that the main consequence of the adoption of such laws will be the seizure of temples with the help of officials who are called upon to execute the laws adopted in the Ukrainian parliament.

“If people do not obey, they will call the police, the army, the national guard. Now the state will not hesitate to interfere in these issues, forcing by violence to go to the Holy Church of Ukraine. Everything from the bishops to simple believers and grandmothers will be faced with a choice: what to do, go to confrontation, leave Ukraine or go to this seemingly canonical, seemingly even under Constantinople, but still splitting church ", - stressed Bezpalko.

In addition, there is a law on so-called parallel communities, when a number of people who are not members of a church, who are not Orthodox at all, can declare themselves as a parallel community of this church and forcefully transfer it to another jurisdiction, the expert recalled.

A similar case has already occurred in Ukraine, when deputies of the Bronnitsky village council in the Volyn region voted to transfer the local community of the canonical church to the new structure of the PCU. The next day, representatives of law enforcement and intelligence agencies explained to the leadership of the local government that such a decision was not part of the powers of the village council.

Reactions of the international community to the actions of the pod have yet, because they are not covered by the international media, said Bogdan Bezpalko.

“As a rule, the world community responds to what is served in global media. It is either not considered at all as a news occasion, or it is presented as an achievement of the Ukrainian president, as a struggle against the “Moscow occupation”. As soon as these messages begin to leak into the global global media, and this inevitably happens, world public opinion will begin to form, at least in the Orthodox world, ”concluded Bezpalko.