FILARET
ASKS TRUMP TO
SUPPORT U.P.Ts.K.P.
The
former primate of
the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kiev Patriarchate (UPTsKP),
Filaret, sent
a letter to American President Donald Trump and asked him for
support "in
the struggle for freedom of conscience and religion and the
rights of believers
of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kiev Patriarchate to
belong to the
church that they determine for themselves."
The text
of the
letter was published on the website of the UPTsKP on 12 August.
This was
reported by Radio Liberty.
In
addition, Filaret
warned Trump "that officials of the American State Department
should not
become victims of manipulation and should not interfere in
purely internal
Ukrainian affairs by supporting only one of the confessions."
"Unfortunately,
several
evil forces are using the authority of the U.S.A. in Ukraine for
violation of human rights in our country and by antidemocratic
methods are
imposing their vision of confessional affiliation, involving in
this even
representatives of the American State Department (for example,
the visit on 31
January 2020 by Secretary of State Michael Pompeo to Kiev and to
the St.
Michael's Golden Domed monastery was used by representatives of
the Orthodox
Church of Ukraine for their own propaganda goals)," the letter
says.
Filaret
also declares
that in January 2019 the UPTsKP "was illegally deprived of the
right of
legal entity (deprived of state registration) and property was
taken away in
the favor of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, and since then our
church has suffered
restrictions and cannot fully exercise its spiritual mission and
believers are
discriminated against in their choice of confession."
"Unfortunately,
Patriarch
of Constantinople Bartholomew in 2019 presented to the Ukrainian
church a tomos not of genuine autocephaly but delivered a
document of
dependency upon himself, and today he is insisting on the
liquidation of the
Kiev patriarchate. But a substantial portion of Orthodox
believers of Ukraine
have firmly decided to remain even in the future in the UPTs of
the Kiev
patriarchate," the letter says. (tr. by PDS, posted 13 August
2020)
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