Viatrovich offers to seize Lavras from the UOC

Vladimir Viatrovich. Photo: delo.ua

Former director of the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory, BP deputy from the European Solidarity faction, Vladimir Viatrovich, called to take away the Kyiv-Pechersk and Pochaiv Lavras from the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. The MP said about it on the page on Facebook.

According to him, "the Moscow Church has become the largest hotbed of coronavirus in Ukraine", because "there are more than 90 infected people in the Kiev Pechersk Lavra alone."

He noted that “the hierarchs of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Church were engaged in direct agitation against quarantine, gathering crowds of people in the Lavra and other churches.”

Such behavior, Viatrovich believes, is “strikingly different from the actions of other Christian churches” – the OCU, the UGCC, and Protestant denominations that “adhere to quarantine, warn priests and parishioners of the risks” and help the country cope with the epidemic by “broadcasting services online etc".

At the same time, according to the parliamentarian, "the actions of the Moscow Church during the pandemic once again show that from whatever perspective, this organization poses a real danger to Ukraine and its citizens."

He is convinced that “the Moscow Church in Ukraine is a network of Kremlin propaganda and home to subversive actions against Ukrainian statehood,” “a powerful factor in Russification” and “this is an organization that impedes any progress and Ukraine’s return home to Europe.”

In addition, Viatrovich believes, “now this is also a hotbed of physical threat for the Ukrainians,” and “the authorities must finally recognize the threats that the Moscow Church poses to Ukraine and protect Ukraine from these threats.”

In his opinion, “this means not to slow down but to steadily comply with the laws adopted by the Rada of the last convocation that will not allow the Russian Church to be called ‘Ukrainian’, stop ‘any political or material support from the state’ and guarantee that ‘every community can freely pass to the canonical Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU – Ed.)."

Viatrovich noted that “for the actions against the security, health of people, encroachment on Ukrainian independence and territorial integrity, for raiding, for anti-state agitation, each actor of the Moscow Church, guilty of these crimes, must be accountable to the law.”

The MP also stated that "the state is not supposed to forever grant the shrines of the Ukrainian people, Kyiv-Pechersk and Pochaiv Lavras, which are the state property, for use by the dangerous pro-Moscow organization that poses a threat to the spiritual and physical health of Ukrainians."

Earlier, the UOJ wrote that Vladimir Viatrovich said that the UOC should be renamed into the ROC.

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