Moscow, August 23, 2024
Photo: spzh.live
On Tuesday, August 20, Ukrainian Parliament voted overwhelmingly in favor of Bill 8371, which is aimed at the banning of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church across the country.
Having been approved in both its first and second readings, the bill now awaits the signature of President Zelensky to pass into law, after which courts will eventually be able to close churches and monasteries for belonging to the UOC under His Beatitude Metropolitan Onuphry of Kiev and All Ukraine.
Yesterday, the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church published a response, condemning the “ongoing witch hunt” and “slanderous anti-Church campaign.”
“In its scale and centralized nature, this measure can surpass all former historical repressions against the Ukrainian Orthodox Church,” including that of the Soviet Union, the Russian Synod warns.
The hierarchs also emphasize the culpability of Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople, who created the schismatic “Orthodox Church of Ukraine,” which has physically seized hundreds of church buildings from the UOC and violently attacked clergy and parishioners. His intrusion into the Ukrainian ecclesiastical sphere has only exacerbated the problem, the Synod laments.
Immediately after the Verkhovna Rada adopted the bill on banning the UOC, a delegation of the Patriarchate of Constantinople arrived in Ukraine to hold dialogues on “Church unity.”
The Russian Synodal statement reads in full:
On August 20, 2024, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine passed in the second reading the bill “On the Protection of the Constitutional Order in the Sphere of Activity of Religious Organizations” that allows, through judicial proceedings, to ban activities of any religious community in the territory of Ukraine if it is “affiliated” with a religious organization in Russia. For the court to give such a ruling, conclusions of a “religious expertise” will suffice, which amid the ongoing witch hunt may and will be falsified.
Those who initiated and endorsed this bill in Ukraine—highest-ranking public officials, the Verkhovna Rada deputies, radical politicians and public figures, representatives of schismatic organizations and the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church—do not conceal that the law directly targets the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, that it is aimed at liquidating it and all its communities or at forcibly transferring them to other religious organizations. Hundreds of monasteries, thousands of communities, and millions of Orthodox Christians in Ukraine will find themselves outside the legal framework and lose their property and places of worship.
During the period of 2014-2023, the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church pointed out on many occasions that the Ukrainian Orthodox Church came under pressure which was undoubtedly part of the government anti-religious policy. The adoption of the law today indicates the powerlessness of the regime, which throughout its political existence has been systematically, step by step trying to weaken, split, and destroy the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.
The primate of the Russian Orthodox Church repeatedly appealed to the UN, the OSCE, and the Council of Europe, as well as leaders of world religious communities, bearing witness to the persecutions against believers in Ukraine. While the violations of the rights of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church members were acknowledged by many experts and human rights organizations in the West, it has not prevented the adoption of the bill which shatters the very idea of the freedom of conscience and fundamental human rights.
For many years, the policy of persecution against the Church has been carried out against a backdrop of the slanderous anti-Church campaign in the Ukrainian mass media aimed at defaming canonical Orthodoxy, as well as instigating and justifying mass seizures of churches called “voluntary transfers.” The seizures are orchestrated by the proponents of the schism and radical nationalists with support from the local authorities, security services ,and law enforcement bodies, and usually entail violence, including mass beatings of the clergy and the faithful. Attempts are being made, and some have succeeded, to seize the largest monasteries of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and forcibly evict their inhabitants.
Ukrainian security services continue to put outright pressure on the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, its episcopate, and clergy. Apart from threats and blackmail, this pressure has manifested itself in dozens of trumped-up criminal cases and unlawful verdicts on political grounds. Many hierarchs and pastors of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church have been arrested, taken into custody, or received unjust sentences.
In a number of Ukrainian regions and localities, local authorities have imposed a downright “ban” on the activities of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, forcibly closing its churches, hindering celebration of divine services, and illegally confiscating plots of land on which monasteries and churches are built.
Having failed in its attempts to weaken the canonical Church in Ukraine or undermine its unity, the local government has taken a step towards its outright ban.
In its scale and centralized nature, this measure can surpass all former historical repressions against the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, including persecutions at the time of the Greek Catholic Union of Brest, and is commensurable to such sorrowful historical precedents as Nero’s and Diocletian’s persecutions in the Roman Empire, the so-called dechristianization of France during the 18th-century French Revolution, atheistic repressions in the Soviet Union, and destruction of the Albanian Orthodox Church under Enver Hoxha’s regime in the 1960s.
The adopted bill is incompatible with the principles of the rule of law; it is a political declaration aimed at legalizing the destruction of the religious community of the majority of the population. The law lays down criteria enabling to determine a group of people connected by their affiliation with the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and carry out targeted political repressions against them.
It is with particular bitterness that we must note the negative role of Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople and the hierarchs who hold the same views. Through their unilateral and hasty actions inconsistent with the spirit of the sacred canons, they have only exacerbated the Church schism in Ukraine, having failed to heal it. The leaders of the schismatics recognized by the Phanar have been particularly furious in demanding the adoption of the law that practically bans the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. And Patriarch Bartholomew, who earlier publicly expressed approval for the criminal prosecution against and arrests of the UOC hierarchs and clergymen, now, like high priests Annas and Caiaphas, has openly supported the government’s actions aimed at crucifying and destroying the canonical Church in Ukraine. Therefore, the Patriarch of Constantinople is personally responsible for orchestrating the persecutions against the faithful of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.
We firmly believe that the gates of hell shall not prevail against the Church of Christ (Mt 16:18), just like the most severe persecutions failed to do in the past, and that the Orthodox Christians in Ukraine will confront these new ordeals with fortitude and steadfastness and in all these things will be more than conquerors through Jesus Who loved us (Rom 8:37). We call upon the plenitude of the Orthodox world to pray ever more fervently for the Ukrainian Orthodox Church which is abiding in afflictions on account of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus (Rev 1:9).
We appeal to international human rights organizations to give an immediate and unbiased response to the flagrant oppression of the faithful in Ukraine.
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