DESS official says state should not govern the Church

DESS official Vyacheslav Horshkov. Photo: DESS

Vyacheslav Horshkov, a representative of the Department for Religious Affairs of Ukraine’s State Service for Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Conscience, said the state should not govern the Church, while the Church should not take the place of the state.

According to the official, the authorities and religious communities should develop a partnership model that would allow them to combine their efforts for the good of the individual. “The state should not govern the Church,” Vyacheslav Horshkov said. “The Church should not replace the state. But the state and the Church can work together for the good of the people.”

The DESS representative noted that the country’s social resilience depends not only on state institutions or the military, but above all on society’s ability to organize itself and help people in difficult circumstances. He stressed that religious communities have become a key network of trust in times of crisis.

DESS noted that the Church is not only a place people come to in peacetime, but also “a network of trust that functions when society is going through its deepest crisis.” The agency also recalled that government bodies did not create the chaplaincy service from scratch, but merely established the legal framework for systematic work by believers who had begun helping military personnel even before the relevant laws were adopted.

The agency representative also focused on the relationship between law, morality and state power in governance during wartime. “A resilient state, therefore, is not merely a state in which laws are observed,” the DESS representative concluded. “It is a state in which legality is combined with justice, and power with responsibility and mercy.”

As the UOJ previously reported, the prime minister discussed with the UCCRO a transition toward a partnership between the authorities and the Church.

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