Negotiations On Peaceful Settlement Of Religious Conflicts Fail In Ternopil

The negotiations between the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Kyivan Patriarchate, and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Moscow Patriarchate were held with the aim of signing a memorandum on peaceful settlement of religious conflicts. The Ternopil region has the greatest amount of Christian communities and churches in Ukraine, but over the last decade, 27 religious communities have been engulfed in conflicts over religious property. Oftentimes, two or more communities have claims for the same religious building. The Greek Catholics agree to take turns at holding services in the same church. The Orthodox, however, are outraged at this proposal. Therefore, the negotiations did not result in an agreement on the distribution of churches. Today, there are 757 Greek Catholic, 283 Autocephalous Orthodox, 196 Kyivan Orthodox and 132 Moscow Orthodox communities in the Ternopil region. Source: www.i-news.org