RUSSIA RELIGION NEWS


Loyalty of Ukrainian church questioned

DEPUTY HEAD OF DNEPROPETROVSK ADMINISTRATION AND UPTs EXCHANGE ACCUSATIONS

Religiia v Ukraine, 16 February 2015

 

The Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow patriarchate, through its official website, accused the deputy head of the Dnepropetrovsk provincial administration, Sviatoslav Oleinik, of "a blatant attempt to inflame interconfessional strife" for his statement about "absolutely explicit sermons of an antigovernment nature" in churches of UPTsMP, Reigiia v Ukraine reports, with reference to Portal-credo.ru and Interfax.

 

Sviatoslav Oleinik, an attorney and former employee of the prosecutor's office, in describing in a recent interview with the publication Gordon the struggle with separatism, declared among other things: "Much attention should be given to churches of the Moscow patriarchate because sermons of an antigovernment nature are occurring in them in an absolutely explicit way, and I do not see so far an appropriate response to these incidents on the part of organs of state security. At the same time, these churches have all kinds of tax preferences. And it is a very large network of spies."

 

In response a counter-accusation of Sviatoslav Oleinik was posted on the official website of UPTs: "He based his accusations on the contents of sermons in 'churches of the Moscow patriarchate.' So far there is no evidence that this representative of the government in Dnepropetrovsk province regularly or even occasionally attended 'churches of the Moscow patriarchate.' Therefore he cannot judge the contents of sermons in these churches on objective bases," the statement said.

 

In the opinion of the official UPTs website, the statements of the deputy head of the Dnepropetrovsk provincial administration "are examples of blatant attempts to inflame interconfessional strife on the part of an official."

 

"From the start of the independence of Ukraine, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church has performed its patriotic mission. In the current difficult historic period it has remained just about the only consolidating factor for the formation of the state as it unites absolutely all of the regions of our state," the official UPTs website affirms.

 

Earlier, another deputy head of the Dnepropetrovsk provincial administration, Boris Filatov, a philanthropist and awardee of the UPTs, declared that he does not want to go to church so long as Patriarch Kirill is commemorated there. "At this time, when the church has turned away from the country, I have turned away from the church," he said. However the official UPTs website has not commented on this declaration. (tr. by PDS, posted 17 February 2015)




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