UPTs: INVESTIGATION OF CHURCH SEIZURES IN UKRAINE IS TRAVESTY
The fact that an investigation of the seizure of churches in the Rovno diocese by the so-called Kiev patriarchate was ordered not by the prosecutor general but by the Ministry of Culture is considered by the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow patriarchate [UPTsMP] to be "an open travesty," the UPTs website reports.
On 2 June, parishioners of the Rovno diocese of the UPTs asked Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and law enforcement agencies of the country for protection. In an open letter they said that representatives of the Kiev patriarchate (which is not recognized by world Orthodoxy) engaged in church raiding and the seizure of church buildings from their legal owners by force. However the presidential administration and the prosecutor general's office refused to investigate the seizure of church buildings, although they instructed the Ministry of Culture to deal with this question.
"We reported criminal actions, the seizure of private property, violence, and persecution for religious identity. The police and prosecutor should deal with this," Vitaly Gerlinsky, the secretary of the Rovno diocese of UPTs, was quoted on the website.
He said that the only agency that has immediately taken the open letter into consideration is the office of the commissioner for human rights in the Supreme Soviet. "For two weeks, bureaucrats of various levels have promised us that they will call a round table and restore legal order. But nothing has been done. And clearly nobody wants to do anything or wants to deal with the Kiev patriarchate. Well, we have not lost faith in the Lord, but we are beginning to lose faith in Ukrainian law," Gerlinsky concluded. (tr. by PDS, posted 9 July 2015)
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