Petition on terminating the UOC-KP liquidation emerges on President’s site

St. Vladimir Cathedral of the UOC-KP. Photo: unian.ua

Representatives of the UOC-KP registered a petition on the website of the President of Ukraine demanding that state registration be returned to the Kiev Patriarchate.

The petition says that the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine illegally removed from the state registration "Kiev Patriarchy of the UOC-KP, while representatives of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) are trying to appropriate all its property and churches."

It is emphasized that "the decisions of the ‘unification council’, which was held on December 15, 2018, with the assistance of the previous government, do not have legal force ‘to initiate the liquidation of the UOC-KP, and ‘the Tomos granted on January 6, 2019, does not correspond to the very essence of independence’."

In addition, the authors of the petition indicate that the OCU is practically "part of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, without the right to supervise foreign parishes, which means that the rights to freedom of conscience of all our believers abroad are also violated."

It is particularly emphasized that none of the representatives of the UOC-KP made a request to the state bodies on the liquidation of this religious structure, whereas “forced liquidation and re-registration of the communities of the Kiev Patriarchate in churches having religious centers outside our state, without taking into account the will of the believers, violate the rights to freedom of religion".

Therefore, the authors of the petition ask "to restore the illegally cancelled state registration of the Kiev Patriarchy of the UOC-KP and take all possible measures to ensure the constitutional right to freedom of conscience".

Earlier, the UOJ wrote that, according to Filaret Denisenko, representatives of the former Ukrainian power, alongside members of the OCU, take away all his property and all finances of the UOC-KP and throw him out into the street.

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