MP about Poroshenko’s religious policy: This is disregard for Orthodoxy

MP of the Verkhovna Rada Vasily Nimchenko

The incursion of current President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko and Speaker of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine Andrei Parubiy into the religious life of our state triggered a split, said Parliamentarian Vasily Nimchenko in an interview with First Cossack Internet channel.

“They (Poroshenko and Parubiy – Ed.) did everything to intervene in the activities of religion. The head of state, together with Parubiy, intervened and caused the split of Christianity of the Eastern rite – Orthodoxy,” Nimchenko said.

The MP remembered how the politicians "went on a church tour"  with the first version of the Tomos.

“This is an open disregard for Orthodoxy,” he noted.

An investigation into the commission of a criminal offense has been opened for Paruby’s public incitement to inter-faith strife, for his shouts of a “sect” toward canonical Orthodoxy, Nimchenko said. And he added that the court has not yet begun to consider the case on the intervention of the Verkhovna Rada in religious affairs.

On October 18, 2018, the speaker of the Verkhovna Rada openly declared that the “Church of the Moscow Patriarchate” is not the Church. “How dare you speak here, from the high Ukrainian tribune, about disdain for the Ecumenical Patriarch?! This is just Gundyaevism and demonstrates that UOC is the KGBist sect,” he replied then to one of the people's deputies.

On December 5, 2018, the Pechersk District Court of Kiev ordered the General Prosecutor’s Office of Ukraine to enter into the Unified Register of Pre-trial Investigations information on the commission of a criminal offense and to start a pre-trial investigation against Parubiy in connection with his rhetoric toward the priests of the UOC. “The Opposition Platform – For Life”, acting within the legal framework, will not allow raider seizures of church property and will protect the clergy and parishioners of the UOC – the only canonical Church in Ukraine, against which the flywheel of political repression is already launched,” Nimchenko told.

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