Government Proposes Partner Model for Relations between Church and State

IVANO-FRANKIVSK — At a meeting with the bishops of the eparchies of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, and Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Kyivan Patriarchate, Yurii Reshetnikov, the head of the State Committee of Ukraine on Nationalities and Religions, said that the government proposes a partner model for relations between the church and state. This was reported by the Ukrainian-language web site of RISU with reference to UNIAN information agency.

“The government highly appreciates what you are doing for the establishment of the Ukrainian state. Today in Ukraine churches are effectively growing and renewing their traditional experiences. Therefore, the government proposes today a partner model for church-state relations,” stressed Reshetnikov to the ministers.

The bishops of the traditional Christian Churches, in particular, Bishop Andrii of Ivano-Frankivsk and Halych of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, voiced the problem of supplanting traditional denominations by foreign ones. They also asked Reshetnikov to solve the problems of “social protection of priests and granting them pensions, and imposing taxes on sponsors donating for the construction of a church, etc.”