Kiev, December 28, 2022
Photo: fraza.com
The Constitutional Court of Ukraine ruled today that the bill calling for the forced renaming of churches or religious organizations associated with organizations in Russia is in line with the state constitution.
Although it has been legally registered as the “Ukrainian Orthodox Church” for 30 years, there have been attempts at least since 2018 under President Poroshenko to forcibly rename the UOC as the “Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine,” although these attempts have been repeatedly blocked by Ukrainian courts.
It is well known that renaming the Church is simply laying the foundation to seize churches and outright ban the Ukrainian Church, which has come under increased pressure and persecution from the state in recent months.
Viktor Yelensky, the new head of the State Ethnopolitics Service (whose predecessor who opposed the banning of the UOC was recently fired), openly stated last week that the courts could outright ban religious organizations.
The new decision of the Constitutional Court takes into account the decision of the European Court of Human Rights in the case of Ilyin vs. Ukraine, which says that the state dictating a church’s name in order not to mislead people can be a justified restriction of the church’s right to name itself, reports the Court’s official site.
However, in his comments on the Court’s decision, the head of the UOC’s Legal Department, Archpriest Alexander Bakhov, again explains that the UOC’s statutes prove that it is completely self-governing, with its administrative center in Kiev.
Thus, “there are no legal grounds for changing the name of religious organizations belonging to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.”
The same point was also made by His Eminence Metropolitan Kliment of Nezhin, the head of the UOC’s Information-Education Department: “We have statutory documents. They clearly state that the UOC is not controlled by any centers abroad, and its administrative center is located in Kiev. Therefore, the effect of this law doesn’t apply to the UOC.”
The UOC also recently learned that it will no longer be able to use the main churches of the Kiev Caves Lavra starting in the new year.
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