Religion

Yesterday, resorting to the most flagrant violations of the Law of Ukraine "On the Rules of Procedure of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine" and to the mass “button punching”, the Verkhovna Rada voted on the so-called “anti-church” law no. 4128-d, discriminating and infringing the rights of the majority of confessions and religious organizations of Ukraine and, above all, of the only canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church headed by His Beatitude Onufriy, Metropolitan of Kyiv and All Ukraine.

This bill was written at the dictation of the Presidential Administration and the only reason for its appearance is to please the presidential election campaign, under pressure from law enforcement authorities and local authorities to ensure a massive transition of parishes from the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church to an artificially created Orthodox Church of Ukraine.

We expect that pressure on the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church will only be increasing, since the President needs to show how the parishes of the UOC en masse move to the pro-presidential church created by him. Such steps will lead to incitement of inter-church strives and to consequences tragic for the state.

This is evidenced by a statement made by representative of Petro Poroshenko Bloc’s faction during the today's conciliation council in the parliament saying that during the week it is necessary to adopt two bills aimed at changing the name of the only legal and canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church and at legalizing transitions of UOC parishes to the church "of Poroshenko’s patriarchy" under pressure from the Security Service of Ukraine.

Our party will defend the unity and interests of believers of the only canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church by all legal means.