The chairman of the World Council of Churches (WCC), Father Ioan Sauca and his deputy Odair Pedrozo Mateus visited Ukraine. The World Council of Churches is an international organization whose goal is to promote unity, justice and peace in the world. Its members are 352 churches from more than 120 countries around the world.
According to the message of the State Service of Ukraine for Ethnic Policy and Freedom of Conscience, they also discussed the possibilities of promoting the World Council of churches to the Orthodox dialogue of Ukraine and spreading truthful information about the crimes of the Russian occupiers in Ukraine in the world. The guests got acquainted with the results of the DESS monitoring on destruction inflicted by the invaders on the buildings of religious communities of Ukraine.
They stressed the importance of the representation of Ukrainian churches in the WCC and their participation in the next 11th WCC Assembly, scheduled for August 31-September 8, 2022, in Germany with the thematic slogan "The Love of Christ leads the world to reconciliation and unity".
As RISU has reported, the Minister of Culture and Information Policy of Ukraine Oleksandr Tkachenko stressed during the meeting that Russia uses culture to broadcast propaganda of its criminal regime, so it is advisable to exclude or at least suspend the membership of representatives of the Russian Federation in the widest possible range of cultural programs and international associations until the complete withdrawal of Russian troops from the territory of Ukraine. This is both a way to block disinformation channels and a powerful signal that the entire civilized world demands that Russia stop this terrible unprovoked war.
They noted the acute challenges facing the WCC and modern theology in conditions when the Russian Orthodox Church does not condemn the shameful war but offers it the ideological basis of the "Russian world" and retransmits cynical narratives of the Kremlin's disinformation. The head of the State Service of Ukraine for Ethnic Policy and Freedom of Conscience, Olena Bohdan, stressed that Russia's war against Ukraine is a war against truth, freedom and humanity.
The head of the State Service of Ukraine for Ethnic Policy and Freedom of Conscience recalled that after the murder of tens of thousands of people and the destruction of the vast majority of buildings in Mariupol, the Kremlin reported in the official media about the "liberation of Mariupol". By destroying the city of Mary (Mariupol) and other locations, the Kremlin killers obviously sought to show that this will happen to every unconquered city in Ukraine, that the choice of Ukrainian cities and villages is either to surrender when enemy troops approach or to face the threat of being destroyed to the ground.
Russian tanks shot at civilian buildings in Mariupol. Among them is the Office of the charity foundation "Caritas" of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, where people were at the time of the deadly shelling. The fact that such murders and destruction are publicly called "liberation" by the top officials of Russia is striking in the refinement of evil. At the same time, the Kremlin's repressive regime controls the situation inside the Russian Federation so much that the religious communities of Russia, whose spiritual mission requires them to be on guard of the truth and protect life, are not only unable to publicly condemn terrible crimes, but also vice versa – they speak out with words of support for Putin's policies.
Two priests, Fr Rostislav Vorobiy (OCU) and Fr Vasyl Prits (UOC-MP), also took part in the meeting between the leaders of the WCC, the head of the State Service of Ukraine for Ethnic Policy and Freedom of Conscience, Olena Bogdan, and the state service expert on religious issues Igor Myalkovsky.
The dialogue highlighted the need to hold as many as possible high-profile meetings and to develop cooperation between the clergy of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the MP, in particular, such as the meeting of priests of the UOC-MP and the OCU in St Sofia of Kyiv a month ago, on July 5.