The Ukrainian authorities will not put pressure on the brethren of the Kiev Pecherka and Pochaev Lavra - the clergy will independently decide to break with the Moscow Patriarchate and move to a new church structure created by Petro Poroshenko and the Istanbul Patriarch.
The head of the Department for Religious Affairs and Nationalities of the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine Andrey Yurash stated this on air on the ZIK TV channel, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“Why do you immediately think that the authorities are planning to move everything? This will be a logical and legal process. Unlike states where totalitarianism reigns, such as in Russia, for example, where Jehovah's Witnesses have already been banned, and there are dozens of persecutions of Pentecostals and Baptists, in our country everything happens according to the law. Article eight of the Law of Ukraine: every religious organization, community, monastery has the right to choose any jurisdiction and change it to any other. Therefore, this is a sacred right, which is absolutely confirmed by the recommendations of the UN, the Venice Commission and the OSCE.
When we have a local Church, I absolutely believe that the spiritual council of the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra will gather and itself will join the future local Church, and this will be the legal and correct path,” the official said.
Let us remind you that the day before the SBU conducted searches at the rector of the Kiev Pechersk Lavra, Metropolitan Pavel, as well as on the territory of the monastery - This is how the security services responded to criticism of Ukrainian schismatics.
On Saturday it became known that the SBU is beginning mass summons for interrogation of priests of the Moscow Patriarchate in Western Ukraine.
“About twenty priests of the Rivne and Sarny diocese received summonses for questioning from the Security Service of Ukraine in the Rivne region.
Over the past five years, tens of thousands of people from different spheres have already gone through subpoenas, threats, criminal cases, searches, arrests and searches. But this has never helped Poroshenko, Gritsak and other random Ukrainian bosses.
Therefore, they will need to be judged very quickly, without wasting much time on procedural procedures. I turned away for half an hour, and someone had already given the verdict.
I think the EU will not object either. Now he doesn’t mind, which means it fully complies with European standards,” comments former presidential administration official Andrei Portno.
It also became known that On December 5, a meeting of the Vinnytsia diocese will be held in the estate of Petro Poroshenko, which could become a decisive battle for the anti-Russian project of church autocephaly