Head of the UOC Law Depatment: Filaret and Ministry of Culture ventilate the same falsehood on the amount of parishes having passed to schism

On 12 February «Espresso TV» channel in the programme «Kniazhytskiy» showed UOC KP leader Filaret who claimed that «one hundred or even more parishes, which used to belong to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, joined the Kiev Patriarchate during the last year», the information running counter to the reality. It was written by Head of the UOC Law Department protopriest Alexander Bakhov on his page in Facebook

Filaret said that «compared to 13 thousand parishes 100 is not that big number», yet even this information is not true, acording to the lawyer: «I wish Mr Filaret did not mislead people and tell a flagrant lie, resorting to manipulations.»

«It's surprising but the same statistics is used by the Ministry of Culture. It makes me laugh that Kiev Patriarchate is eager to act on its own but is unable on its own to calculate the number of parishes,» he adds.

Protopriest Alexander Bakhov cites the statistics that in fact the Kiev Patriarchate has embraced as many as 8 UOC congregations since 2014, with nearly 40 temples of the UOC communities having been taken over. «Unfortunately, all raids are commonly referred to by the state authorities and members of the Kiev Patriarchate as «transitions». Because bashing of the people, cutting off locks, threats, violence, and illegal coming into ownership of the property – these are generalized as «transitions,» stresses the cleric.

He explains that the data furnished by Filaret are easy to check: one should merely ask to show re-registered charters of these parishes. «But even here manipulations are employed – Ptichya, Badovka, Ugrinov villages – this list is to be continued and extended, when temples of the UOC religious communities are seized by newly-hatched congregations of the Kiev Patriarchate. You won’t believe it but they also call it transitions,” he writes.