UOC representative speaks at the World Summit in Defense of Persecuted Christians

The World Summit in Defense of Persecuted Christians is held in Washington, US, on May 10-13. The conference brought together 600 participants from over 135 countries, reports the Information and Educational Department of the UOC.

The World Summit in Defense of Persecuted Christians was organized by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. The meeting was arranged to address the problem of mass persecutions of Christians in the Middle East, Africa and other regions, unprecedented in modern history. Such large-scale atrocities cannot be passed over in silence by the Christian community. The Summit in Defense of Persecuted Christians is organized to provide a platform for a thorough discussion of this problem with the view of changing the situation for the better. At the summit, not only cases of open persecution, but also discrimination and violations of the rights of believers are discussed.

About 80% of cases of persecution of Christians are fixed mainly in Islamic countries and related to states’ legislation, religious extremism and intolerance.

The participants of the summit noted during the discussions that the oppression of Christians also arise due to political motives, state propaganda, attempts of the state to totally control the religious sphere. Participants of the forum pointed out that one of the reasons for persecution of Christians is nationalist chauvinism.

With the blessing of His Beatitude Metropolitan Onuphry of Kiev and All Ukraine, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church was represented at the summit by the Deputy Chairman of the Department for External Church Relations, Archpriest Nikolai Danilevich.

Within the framework of one of the sessions, Archpriest Nikolai Danilevich told the forum participants about violations of the rights of UOC believers in Ukraine. Among other things, the priest mentioned discriminatory bills (№№ 4511 and 4128), which are already on the agenda of the Verkhovna Rada. The UOC spokesperson noted the paradox of the Ukrainian situation: discriminatory actions take place in the country with the overwhelming majority of the Christian population and are directed against the most numerous religious community.