R.P.Ts. LINKS POSSIBLE ZELENSKY VICTORY IN ELECTION WITH
END OF
PERSECUTION OF CANONICAL CHURCH
Interfax-Religiia,
15 April 2019
The Russian Orthodox Church (RPTs) believes that in the
event of a
victory by Vladimir Zelensky in the second round of presidential
elections in
Ukraine, there may be a restoration of inter-confessional
harmony.
"If a person wins the elections who does not have a
relationship
with the church and who even in one of his statement ridiculed
that tomos,
comparing it with a thermos, one may hope that the persecution
against the
church will be ended and that inter-confessional harmony will be
restored in
Ukraine, even though very substantial damage has been done to
it," the
head of the Department for External Church Relations,
Metropolitan Ilarion,
declared in answer to questions from the host of the program
Church and World
on television channel Rossiia-24.
In the metropolitan's opinion, Zelensky's chances for
victory in the
second round of presidential elections, which will occur in
Ukraine on 21
April, are very high and which are facilitated in particular by
Zelensky's role
in the popular serial Servant of the People.
"It is a very clever satire on contemporary Ukrainian
society. It
created the image of a people's president, a president who
fights corruption
and fights with bureaucrats, and I think that this image is very
appealing to
the majority of Ukrainian citizens. So this is why Zelensky has
a high rating
and a very high chance that after have depicted the president
originally in the
serial he then will become president in reality," the
representative of
the RPTs thinks.
At the same time, if P. Poroshenko remains in power,
"one may
expect a continuation of persecution of millions of Orthodox
believers of
Ukraine," the metropolitan continued, noting that "it is as a
persecutor of the church that this man has left his mark on
history."
Responding to the question of for whom winning the
debates will be
easier, a professional actor or a professional politician,
Metropolitan Ilarion
noted that he does not consider P. Poroshenko to be a
professional politician.
"If he were a professional politician, he would not have
made the
mistakes that he has made. I think that his unprofessionalism
was very clearly
manifested in the incident of the tomos. Even if this incident
gained him a
certain percentage of votes, it still, I think, will not save
him from defeat.
That is, what this incident was conceived to be is now falling
apart before
this man's eyes," the hierarch said.
On 15 December of last year, with the active support of P. Poroshenko and the patriarch of Constantinople, a new Ukrainian church was created on the foundation of uncanonical religious organizations. Despite the fact that it was not recognized by world Orthodoxy, the authorities helped it in every way to be established within the country itself, viewing the tomos concerning autocephaly as one of the pillars of Ukrainian statehood. From the first days of its existence, activists of the new church structure began seizing church buildings of the canonical church everywhere, which provoked active protests of parishioners and clergy of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. (tr. by PDS, posted 15 April 2019)
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