Kiev, November 29, 2022
Office of the President of Ukraine (YouTube)
A petition calling for President Zelensky to support a new bill that would completely ban the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church will be taken under consideration by the head of state.
Any petition registered on the official site of the President of Ukraine that receives at least 25,000 votes must then be officially considered by the President. As of 1:30 PM, November 29, the petition, authored by Deputy Oleksiy Goncharenko of the European Solidarity Party, has received 25,879 votes.
The petition calls for the President to support draft law 8221, “which provides for a ban on the activities of institution subordinate to the aggressor country.”
Although the Ukrainian Orthodox Church removed all connection with the Russian Orthodox Church from its statutes at its Council in late May, the schismatics and nationalists and many politicians continue to characterize the Church as just the Russian Church in Ukraine, which must be eliminated.
“This will help return such iconic objects as the Kiev Caves, Holy Dormition-Pochaev, and Svyatogorsk Lavras to state ownership,” Goncharenko writes.
Bill 8221 was registered in the Verkhovna Rada on November 22. Ukrainian politicians have been trying for years now to ban the Orthodox Church, but their efforts have increased since the war began in February. Local authorities in various places throughout the country have declared their own illegal bans on the Church.
According to the bill, only structures that are part of the schismatic OCU would be able to call themselves “Orthodox.”
Meanwhile, the Ukrainian Security Services have significantly increased their pressure on the Church in the past week, conducting “counterintelligence” searches at monasteries and diocesan administrations throughout the country. In several places, Church representatives have accused the authorities of planting evidence.
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