Kiev, August 26, 2024
Photo: kyivindependent.com
President Vladimir Zelensky of Ukraine signed Bill 8371 on banning the Orthodox Church nationwide into law on August 24, Ukrainian Independence Day.
“This is the law that protects Ukrainian Orthodoxy from dependence on Moscow and guarantees the dignity of the shrines of our Ukrainian people,” Zelensky said, reports the official site of the President of Ukraine.
Ukrainian Parliament passed the bill in its second reading on August 20. Though the bill speaks of banning those religious organizations that are centered in Russia, Ukrainian MPs and politicians openly proclaim that they in fact intend to ban the Kiev-centered Ukrainian Orthodox Church.
The UOC statutes adopted in May 2022, registered with the state and published on the site of the State Service of Ukraine for Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Conscience, read:
The highest organs of Church authority and administration of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church are the Council of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, the Council of Bishops of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, and the Holy Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, headed by the Metropolitan of Kiev and All Ukraine.
In a stunning case of inverted logic, in his address for Independence Day, Zelensky borrowed a phrase from his predecessor, Petro Poroshenko, referring to his fellow Ukrainians of the UOC as “Moscow demons.” This, despite the fact that the OCU regularly breaks God's commandments by stealing church property from the UOC and beating and "disappearing" its clergy and parishioners. And the Ukrainians whom Zelensky is supposedly bringing to the light by this action even hold satanic rites at UOC holy places, concerts at Greek Catholic churches with singers dressed as demons, and another concert in one of the Orthodox Church's most holy sites, the Kiev Caves Lavra, with songs explicitely about murdering Russians, extolling the same.
“Today, Ukrainian Orthodoxy is taking a step towards liberation from Moscow demons,” the president said.
In October 2018, Poroshenko praised the Patriarchate of Constantinople’s decision to enter into communion with the Ukrainian schismatics, saying: “This is a great victory of the God-loving Ukrainian people over the Moscow demons, the victory of Good over Evil, the victory of Light over Darkness.”
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