RUSSIA RELIGION NEWS


Ukrainian officials intervene in church disputes

MINISTRY OF CULTURE CREATES WORKING GROUP FOR SETTLING INTERCHURCH CONFLICTS

Institute of Religious Liberty, 1 December 2014

 

A working group has been initiated and designed for solving ambiguous situations that now are arising in relations between the UPTs of the Moscow patrirchate and UPTs of the Kiev patriarchate.

 

This was declared by the deputy director of the Department for Affairs of Religions and Nationalities of the Ukrainian Ministry of Culture, Andrei Yurash, the Institute of Religious Liberty reports.

 

The first session of the Working Group for Matters of Settlement of Critical Interchurch Conflicts was held in the premises of the Ministry of Culture on 26 November 2014.

 

"Now it is necessary to monitor on a governmental level certain situations which have been exacerbated in interconfessional relations," Deputy Minister of Culture Alexander Zhuravchak said.

 

The session's participants discussed results of monitoring of incidents of interchurch conflict according to information that was provided by provincial government administrations. Specific incidents of conflict in Rovno and Khmelnitsky provinces also were discussed in detail, as well as the reasons for their occurrence.

 

"The situation is very ambiguous and it is impossible to view it on a single plane. There are specific questions that are connected with the fulfillment of the Law on freedom of conscience, that is, changes in the jurisdictional affiliation in parishes, as well as a whole complex of both juridical problems and personality problems. But the social and political context most complicates the situation, which cannot be ignored," Andrei Yurash noted.

 

The representatives of Orthodox churches who attended the session were unanimous about the necessity of eliminating confrontational rhetoric from official documents. They welcomed the creation of the working group as a venue for discussion of critical problems of interconfessional relations and they agreed that ending tension in interchurch relations is in the interests of the entire society.

 

Participants in the session included:

 

representatives of UPTsMP:

 

Archpriest Alexander Bakhov, chairman of the judicial division of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church;

Bishop of Vasilkov Nikolai, vicar of the Kiev metropolia of UPTs;

 

representatives of UPTsKP:

 

Archbishop of Rovno and Ostrog Illarion, head of the administration of external church relations of UPTsKP;

Archbishop of Chernigov and Nezhin Evstraty, secretary of the Holy Synod of UPTsKP;

 

representatives of the Ukrainian Ministry of Culture:

 

Deputy Minister of Culture Alexander Zhuravchak;

Deputy Director of the Department for Affairs of Religions and Nationalities Andrei Yurash;

and other personnel of the ministry;

 

experts:

 

chairman of the board of the public organization Institute of Religious Liberty Alexander Zaets;

Ukrainian people's deputy Viktor Elenskii;

head of the Department for Affairs of Ethno-national Policy, Religions, and Foreign Ukrainians of the Secretariat of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine Yury Reshetnikov.

 

With a goal of continual development of suggestions and preparation for subsequent sessions it was decided to create a small working group for problems of settlement of interchurch conflicts. (tr. by PDS, posted 2 December 2014)

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