Court doesn’t grant Ministry of Culture’s appeal on renaming UOC

The Kiev Court of Appeal decided in favour of the UOC. Photo: free sources

On July 22, 2019, the Sixth Administrative Court of Appeal of Kiev dismissed the appeal of the Ministry of Culture in the case of renaming the UOC and left the decision of the District Administrative Court of Kiev to halt the process of the forced renaming of the UOC, reports the “1Kozak” YouTube channel.

The Ministry of Culture continues to look for workarounds and do everything possible to forcibly rename the UOC, the channel's journalists said. In turn, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church has to defend its constitutional rights in court.

We recall that on March 23, 2019, it became known that the District Administrative Court of Kiev opened proceedings in the case of the UOC claim to invalidate the decision of the Ministry of Culture, obliging it to indicate in its name the affiliation with the ROC.

On April 22, 2019, the Kiev District Administrative Court stopped the process of the forced name-change of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

In response to this decision, the Ministry of Culture filed an appeal, which was considered at the meeting of the Sixth Administrative Court of Appeal in Kiev.

The final decision of the appellate court said: “The court ruled to leave the appeal of the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine dismissed, and the decision of the District Administrative Court of the city of Kiev to remain unchanged.”

As the UOJ reported, on December 20, 2018, the Verkhovna Rada passed a law obliging the UOC to indicate in its name the affiliation with the ROC. On December 22, this law was signed by the President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko. In turn, the UOC announced their intention to appeal bill No. 5309 in the Constitutional Court of Ukraine.

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