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Conflict between the Ukrainian Orthodox Churches discussed at OSCE meeting

01.10.2015, 13:46
From September 21 to October 2, 2015, the OSCE meeting was held in Warsaw (Poland) to consider fulfillment of the commitmentswithin the human dimension, in particular the issues of implementation of human rights in various fields.

From September 21 to October 2, 2015, the OSCE meeting was held in Warsaw (Poland) to consider fulfillment of the commitmentswithin the human dimension, in particular the issues of implementation of human rights in various fields.

The event was also attended by representatives of the governments of the countries - members of the OSCE, including Ukraine, representatives of the Embassy of Ukraine in Poland, representatives of some Ukrainian confessions, human rights activists and lawyers. The conflict between the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church was one of the issues discussed by the participants of the meeting.

In his speech, the representative of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church Moscow Patriarchate Archpriest Myola Danylevych described the major violations of the rights of believers of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

In particular, it was said that at the beginning of 2014,the aggressive action against the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (MP) became more frequent, which was assessed by the UOC (MP) as discriminatory. Thus, the UOC (MP) cited an example whenon January 28, 2015, the deputies of Kyiv City Council adopted a decision which provided benefits to religious organizations in Kyiv in the form of exemption from property tax. The only exception was the religious communities of the UOC. This decision was revoked by the Resolution of Kyiv District Administrative Court as of June 18, 2015. Such violations of rights, as stressed by the UOC (MP) were committed by Lviv and Ternopil regional councils.

According to the UOC representative, “whileat the central level the authorities are trying to lead a balanced religious policy, there are a lot of abuses at the local level. A separate field, as emphasized in the UOC (MP), where the most violations of the rights of believers occur, are the so-called transitions of parishes from the UOC (MP) to UOC-KP.

The Ukrainian Orthodox Church Kyiv Patriarchate offered to involve the OSCE and the Ukrainian government to solve problems with the church buildings of the religious communities who have decided to switch from the jurisdiction of the Moscow Patriarchate to the UOC-KP.

 “Taking advantage of the opportunity and the presence of a representative of this church (UOC-MP - Ed.) we suggest holding constructive talks with our two churches aimedat development and approval of the patternof actual solution to the problem solution with participation of representatives of the OSCE and the Government of Ukraine. We suggest that the issues of ownership of a church building in each case wereresolved in favor of the majority of the community and the minority was provided withsome other premises, or the majority and minority could serve worship alternately,” said Archbishop Yevstratiy Zorya, Archbishop of Chernighiv and Nizhyn of the UOC-KP.