"Miriane" calls on UOC believers to come to Rada to defend their rights

The Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine. Photo: walking.kiev.ua

The Public Union “Miriane” ("Laity") called on the believers of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church to come to the walls of the Verkhovna Rada to defend their rights at 10:00 am next Tuesday, June 15, 2021. The head of the NGO “Miriane”, journalist and Orthodox believer Vasily Makarovsky published the corresponding appeal on the pages of social networks and the YouTube channel of the project.

“You all know that over the past two years there have been two laws in Ukraine that completely violate the constitutional rights of believers of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church,” recalled Vasyl Makarovsky. “One of them (No. 2673-VIII) helps the raiders take our churches, the other (No. 2662-VIII) takes the name of our Ukrainian Orthodox Church. In the last two years alone, about 200 of our churches were seized by force or illegally reregistered <...> State intervention in the affairs of the Church, discrimination against the UOC and the promotion of another "right" and favourite confession have become a shameful tradition since the Poroshenko time, and, unfortunately, this tradition continues in one way or another under the new government."

He stated that the laity of the UOC had already repeatedly appealed to the authorities because of these criminal laws and discrimination against the Church, and even personally handed over 1 million signatures to the Office of the President of Ukraine in defense of their rights.

“Our pain, a million signatures, seemed not to be noticed. Well, if the Office of the President or the Verkhovna Rada for some reason cannot offer their own solution to the problem, we will give them ours,” Vasily Makarovsky emphasized.

He said that talented lawyers from among the Orthodox laity had prepared two bills "which will break this circle of redirects of our appeals and abolish anti-church laws".

“Next Tuesday we will publicly submit these bills to the Office of the President and the Verkhovna Rada. Therefore, we call on all caring Orthodox Christians to come under the walls of the Verkhovna Rada to pray and help the people's deputies return constitutional rights to the citizens of Ukraine at 10:00 a.m. on June 15.  See you at this place," urged the head of the NGO "Miriane".

As reported earlier, a large-scale project "Miriane" (“Laity”), which calls on UOC believers to stop being a silent and invisible majority and take an active position – for the faith, traditional values and the Church, has appeared in Ukraine.

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