Filaret hopes new head of Ministry of Culture will bring interfaith peace

The new Minister of Culture of Ukraine Alexander Tkachenko. Photo: the FB page of the head of the UOC-KP Filaret Denisenko

On June 5, 2020, the head of the UOC-KP Filaret Denisenko congratulated Alexander Tkachenko on his appointment as Minister of Culture of Ukraine and expressed the hope that the new head of the Ministry of Culture would bring interfaith peace to the country.

“I believe that due to you it will be possible to develop partnerships and mutually beneficial relations between the Ukrainian state and the UOC-KP, truly independent of foreign religious centers, and peace and inter-faith harmony will prevail in society,” Filaret addressed Tkachenko from his Facebook page.

The head of the Kyiv Patriarchate reminded the new Minister of Culture that his religious organization “was illegally deprived of state registration”, and the rights of believers were systematically neglected.

“I hope that with your appointment as the Minister of Culture and Information Policy of Ukraine, illegal preferences to individual faiths will finally disappear and the Ukrainian state will guarantee equal constitutional rights to all Churches and religious organizations, and state-church relations will be based on respect for the Constitution and laws,” Filaret said.

He also noted that he gratefully recalls a personal meeting with Tkachenko, during which Filaret and the new head of the Ministry of Culture discussed religious processes in the country.

Earlier, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine appointed the Honorary President of “1 + 1 Media” Alexander Tkachenko to the post of Minister of Culture and Information Policy. Prior to this appointment, Tkachenko was a deputy from the “Servant of the People” faction and the head of the Verkhovna Rada Humanitarian and Information Policy Committee.

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