The UOC (MP) attempts to prove that transitions of the parishes from their confessions to the Kyiv Patriarchate, which have become common to date, are illegal. They call them ‘raiding’, ‘seizure by force’, carried out by the priests of the UOC-KP with ‘support of local government’, this was stated in the text of Archpriest Alexander Bakhov, head of the Synodal Legal Department of the UOC (MP), which is posted on the official website of the Church.
Explaining Article 8 of the Law of Ukraine ‘On Freedom of Conscience and Religious Organizations’, Archpriest notes that the right to determine the religious centers of subordination or modify them, belongs exclusively to a religious community. In practice, he says, it is the substitution of concepts that takes place, as religious communities are identified with the territorial community.
“According to this logic, it is enough to live in a particular locality to have the right to decide the fate of any religious community in this locality, and no matter what faith you believe, and what church you adhere to. This is the principle that basically the UOC-KP members misuse, organizing the so-called vote or meeting of the village, which decides the issue of changing jurisdiction of the religious community, then, as a rule, captures the temple,” said the head of the Synodal Legal Department of the UOC (MP) without citing any particular case where there have been ‘raider attacks’ described in his scheme.
“Under these circumstances we have the classic signs of raiding that are illegal seizure by force of someone’s property (churches, ancillary buildings, liturgical utensils), illegal change of governing bodies and illegal amendments to statutory documents of a religious community (parish),” he added.
According to the priest, most of the protocols submitted for registration in recent months, were drawn up in violation of the Statute of a religious community, they were drawn up by persons who are not authorized to do so, or are not even members of a particular religious community.
It should be noted that speaking about the Kyiv Patriarchate, the chief lawyer of the UOC (MP) was using the vocabulary of already forgotten era of active religious conflict and calls the UOC-KP ‘schismatic, self-proclaimed and unrecognized by universal Orthodoxy’.
As RISU already reported, recently in Ukraine there has been a wave of transitions of the parishes of the UOC (MP) to the UOC-KP. The process occurs is particularly active in the west of the state, even at the home village of the current Primate of the UOC (MP), where the community decided to leave the Moscow Patriarchate.
The Kyiv Patriarchate explains said transitions by the unacceptable position of the clergy of the Moscow Patriarchate, which refused to pray for Ukrainian soldiers in sermon, calling them fascists and fratricides, preached the idea of the “Russian world”, calling the aggressor the liberator. This behavior of priests causes resentment in the congregations and that is why they change their religious jurisdiction.
Metropolitan Dmytro (Rudiuk) of Lviv and Sokal of the UOC-KP, particularly commenting on the request of Ambassador for Religious Freedom of Canada Andrew Bennett on the situation with the transition of a number of parishes, assured that all these processes are within the scope of Ukrainian legislation.
“As for the transitions of the parishes of the Moscow Patriarchate to out denomination, it seems to me that any accusations against us look like unfair shifting of the blame. They want to present their internal problems to society and even the world as our illegal and provocative actions. In fact, all these processes are legitimate and, I should note, even logical. The measure of legitimacy here is single and unambiguous – their compliance with the legislation of Ukraine. It is known that the changes of jurisdiction as of today took place in the way envisaged by the effective legislation through the original parish referendum. At that , there was no aggression either on our part or on the part of the congregation willing to obey the Kyiv Patriarchate, to those parishioners who showed the opposite opinion and desire, and, conversely, some villages were supposed to keep parish chapels, priests’ house etc for religious use of the Moscow Patriarchate”, said the UOC-KP Metropolitan.