Archpriest Nikolai Danilevich: Bill #4511 may trigger sectarian war

Does the Ukrainian Orthodox Church need a "special status" in Ukraine, supposed by bill #4511? This issue was in the centre of discussion by guests of the programme "Your Freedom": deputy head of the Department for External Church Relations of the UOC archpriest Nikolai Danilevich and vice-president of the Ukrainian Association of Religion Studies Liudmila Filipovich, reports "Radio Freedom".

Archpriest Nikolai Danilevich explained that bill #4511 directed against the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, given the fact that the UOC has canonical, not legal communion with the Moscow Patriarchate. "Ukrainian Orthodox Church, like any religious organization has no legal status. There are 12,500 parishes, which are legal entities. Each of them needs to assign a special status. This will result in a new conflict. If MPs want conflict, they should say directly: we want to provoke a new conflict, we want one more division, inter-religious war," said Nikolai Danilevich.

The cleric also stressed that now a lot of fake information is disseminated associated with the priests of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church – about refusal to give last rites to fallen in ATO soldiers, about keeping weapons – all this false information has not been confirmed. There is no collective responsibility of the UOC: each priest bears personal responsibility. "Priests who are in occupied territory shall stay in their churches and provide spiritual care to those who come to church without sharing their political views," said Nikolai Danilevich.

Bill #4511 was also commented by the vice-president of the Ukrainian Association of Religion Studies Liudmila Filipovich: "I am sorry that such a bill has appeared. We introduce state control and direct intervention in the affairs of religious organizations, if their work is not favoured by the state. If such conflicts arise, they must be solved not by passing discriminatory laws but in another way." If you want to ban a religious organization – "the ban will be without trial, at the sole decision of the Department for Religious and Ethnic Affairs of the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine," said the theologian.

We recall that bill 4511, Art. 7, suggests a norm, according to which in case of systematic violations of Ukrainian legislation and establishing the fact of collaboration with the military-terrorist groups, the state body authorized to register the statute of religious organizations, initiates the termination of the activities of the religious organizations in Ukraine.

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