In Kiev, 10,000 believers prayed to bring deputies to reason. People gathered near the parliament building, which was supposed to adopt two draft laws regarding religion. One of them makes the Orthodox Church fully dependent on the state, and the second one allows illegal seizures of cathedrals. It wasn’t possible to bring the deputies to reason. The voting wasn’t taken off from the agenda, and was only postponed simply because today there wasn’t enough votes to adopt the document. Anton Lyadov will tell more.
Let us pray to the Lord! Lord, have mercy! They came to Kiev from all over Ukraine: Zaporozhye, Kirovograd, Rovno eparchies. Shoulder to shoulder, thousands of people. We won’t abandon our faith! I will die in this holy church. And I will remain faithful and devoted to the holy Orthodox Church. I won’t betray my church, my faith, and my ancestors who would now stand up and say: "What are you doing, people? Repent! We must fear God! Don't be separated!" They took away my bread, my pension, even the light of God. Do you understand that I've already been waiting for my pension for two days? But I haven’t received it yet. I don’t have a single piece of bread, a single piece of meat at home. If you don’t give us pensions, don’t give us money to buy bread, at least, let us pray! Was it really necessary to arrange this funeral march?
People don’t react to provocateurs. It can be seen that they were preparing in advance. Huge speakers, a stage, girls wearing tights. It’s not by accident that behind the Verkhovnaya Rada, they decided to organize a sportsman's day together with the event of the religious. Lord have mercy! The most shameful thing is that these bills are being created to bring our state back to the level of the totalitarian past, when the state ruled all spheres of life and church life. Here is a quote from the Law on Freedom of Conscience and Religious Organizations. "The person's belonging to a religious community is determined by their self-identification with this religious community, which is confirmed by participation in the religious life of a particular society."
The drafts are written in a complicated way, but the essence is simple. It turns out that anyone can come to a church, put, for example, a candle, help with cleaning, and thus demonstrate participation in the life of this community. This can become the basis for the seizure of a church. It’s the practice of raiders, as any person can come and say, I am the owner of this cathedral. Not the community that prays here, but I or my group of associates. We are actually the owners. We can kick out the canonical community, kick out the priest, and seize the cathedral. This, of course, is done exactly as told by the dissenters, because it’s they who benefit from such a scenario. People don’t follow them, so they will take the cathedrals away from the canonical church with the help of politicians. These are very foul and cynical tactics. This is how it looks in practice.
In Kinakhovtsy village in the Ternopol region, people blocked the entrance. As archpriest Andrei Garasim told, May 16, representatives of the Kiev Patriarchate with twenty strong guys broke the holy gates, broke into the cathedral, the priest was kicked downstairs. This video was shot by the priest himself. And there are dozens of such cases. They are not even being investigated. Pierced heads, bruises from rebars, that was how they fought for the church in the Pticha village. They threw Molotov cocktails, sprayed pepper gas, hit us with rebar and nightsticks. And we sang "The Most Holy Mother of God." In the end, they had to pray in a garage. More than 40 parishes have already been seized this way, but, as I have already said, up to now, the law has been in favor of the real owners of the cathedrals, and now, if these new laws are adopted, the law will no longer be in favor of the canonical church.
Another bill suggests that the priests of Ukrainian churches should be appointed with the approval of the state authorities. The law says that there will be a registration procedure. If a parish wants to invite a priest, they need to ask for permission. In the event of systematic violation of Ukrainian legislation, cooperation with militarist and terrorist groups, failure to comply with the requirements of this law, the state initiates the cessation of activities of the religious organization in Ukraine. All religious confessions of Ukraine, Orthodox, Catholics, Jews, Muslims, have already spoken out against the changes. Kirill, the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, addressed the leaders of the Normandy Format, as well as Pope Francis, the UN Secretary General, and the Secretary General of the World Council of Churches, an organization that represents about 500 million Christians in 110 countries.
The Secretary General of the Council of Churches himself has already sent an appeal to Ukrainian President Poroshenko and Chairman of the Rada Parubiy. Adoption of the above-mentioned draft laws will jeopardize the principle of freedom of religion and equality of all churches and religious communities in Ukraine, and may cause a new wave of tension in Ukrainian society. We call for these draft laws, which are fraught with negative consequences, to be withdrawn.
In Ukraine, more and more priests and parishioners speak against the bills. In Zhytomyr, Ternopol, Volyn, Vinnitsa, and many other regions every day. In the Verkhovnaya Rada, having seen the reaction, they decided to postpone the vote because of a lack of quorum. But the nationalists understood everything literally. In the town of Belgorod-Dnestrovsky in the Odessa region, people poured brilliant green over a deputy, who allowed himself to speak out against the construction of a church of the Kiev Patriarchate on foreign soil, and tried to put him into a garbage can.
