Vatican Speaks Out Against Banning UOC

Meeting in the Vatican. Photo: DESS press service

VATICAN CITY — On Nov. 18, 2025 at the Vatican, the Prefect of the Dicastery for the Eastern Churches of the Roman Catholic Church, Cardinal Claudio Gugerotti, received a Ukrainian delegation consisting of the head of the State Service for Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Conscience (DESS), Viktor Yelensky, and Ukraine’s Ambassador to the Vatican, Andriy Yurash, UOJ-Ukraine reported, with reference to DESS.

According to the press service of the State Ethnopolitics Agency, the cardinal stated that he agrees on the need for fair punishment of certain individuals — including clergy — who violate state laws or collaborate with occupying forces, but emphasized that he “does not consider it acceptable to impose collective punishments on religious organizations.”

In response, Yelensky assured Gugerotti that speaking of collective punishment for the entire UOC “does not seem possible.”

Previously, UOJ reported that a former Ukrainian MP alleged that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy personally approved the arrest of Met. Arseny of Sviatohirsk.

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