Work on Improvement of Religious Law Begins in Ukraine

On 13 December, the first session of the work team set up on the instruction of President Viktor Yanukovych to improve religious law was held. The group is to develop a new version of the Law of Ukraine “On Freedom of Worship and Religious Organizations” as its existing wording complicates the procedure of registration of religious organizations. The members of the All-Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organizations included in the composition of the work team support annulment of the existing wording of the law altogether.

According to Kommersant Ukraine, the meeting was held at the Ministry of Culture and was opened by First Deputy Minister of Culture, Yurii Bohutskyi. Representatives of the Ministry of Culture promised to take into account all the requests of the Council of Churches and to develop a new bill to be sent out to all the members of the council by E-mail.

The work team was set up on the instruction of President Viktor Yanukovych. In this way, the president responded to the protests of the All-Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organizations against the  passing by the Parliament of alterations to the law signed by him on 21 November. In particular, the amendments considerably complicate the procedure of granting the status of a legal person to religious organizations due to the introduction of two unmatched  procedures, the registration of statutory documents and the state registration (inclusion in the unified register of legal persons). In addition to AUCCRO members, the work team also includes representatives of the Ministries of Culture and Justice.

Secretary of the Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Kyivan Patriarchate, Archbishop Yevstratii (Zoria) stated that the main objective of AUCCRO was annulment of the existing wording and passing of a new law which would contain the existing provisions regarding the registration of religious organizations. The hierarch stressed on the necessity to improve the cooperation between the Churches and the State.

“We met, communicated and presented proposals before the signing of the effective law but the result is completely different from what we expected. It is probably due to the lack of interaction between the branches of the power regarding the Church,” noted the archbishop.

Head of the External Relations Department of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC), Fr. Oleksa Petriv stated that AUCCRO does not demand that the state should change its conceptual attitude to the Church but seeks to secure alterations to a specific law which should be passed with taking into account the opinion of representatives of religious organizations. Deputy Chief Rabbi of Kyiv and Ukraine, Gennadii Bilorytskyi supported the priest: “None of us is a lawyer and we are not very good at writing laws. We would like to present the position of the denominations and to hear from experts and lawyers suggestions of how it can be formulated in terms of legislation. We want to be heard by content and not by form.”

Archbishop Yevstratii also proposed to develop a methodological guide on registration of Church organizations. According to him, it is necessary in view of the loose interpretation by officials of the requirements of the Law on Freedom of Worship and Religious Organizations.” Te archbishop is convinced that a unified guide will ensure simplification of the procedure of the registration.

“I think that the bill will be submitted to the Parliament’s consideration at the next parliamentary session in February at the earliest as it is to be agreed upon by all the members of the Council of Churches,” stated one of the participants.