Heads of Seven Churches send letter to president regarding introduction of military chaplaincy

The heads of the seven denominations, who on November 10, 2008, signed the Memorandum of Cooperation in Matters of Pastoral Care in the Armed Forces of Ukraine with the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, and whose authorized representatives were included in the Council on Matters of Pastoral Care attached to the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, sent a joint letter to Ukraine’s president. The document is written in response to the instruction of the president from February 7, 2011, to strengthen the military and patriotic and spiritual education of the military personnel, reported the Information Department of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church.

The mentioned instruction envisaged the creation in the Armed Forces of Ukraine and other military formations, established according to Ukrainian law, of necessary conditions for military personnel to realize their right to the freedom of religion, including the right to participate in divine services and religious rites, as well as the right to receive pastoral care.  

The heads of the churches and religious organizations expressed in their letter gratitude for the initiative of the state to ensure the constitutional rights and freedoms of its citizens wearing the uniform and voiced their joint position in support of the initiatives of the president to meet the religious needs in the security forces of Ukraine and proposed to consider the possibility of introducing the institute of military priesthood as the most effective and historically justified mechanism of meeting religious needs of believing military personnel.

“Such a cooperation between different denominations and the state is conducted for the first time in the history of the Ukrainian military pastoral care, which guarantees equal participation of all the participants of the church-military relations in these processes despite the interdenominational specificities,” commented the deputy head of the Department of the Patriarchal Curia of UGCC for Pastoral Care of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Fr. Lubomyr Yavorskyi.  

The document is signed by the heads of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Moscow Patriarchate, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Kyivan Patriarchate, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, the Roman Catholic Church in Ukraine, the All-Ukrainian Union of Associations of Evangelical Christians Baptists, the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church and the Spiritual Directorate of Muslims of Ukraine.