Filaret Denisenko files lawsuit to renew registration of UOC-KP

Filaret Denisenko is suing for the official restoration of the Kyiv Patriarchate. Photo: Zerkalo Nedeli

The head of the UOC-KP and “Honorary Patriarch of the OCU” Filaret Denisenko filed a lawsuit with the Kyiv District Administrative Court demanding that the State Service for Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Conscience be obligated to “register the resolution of the Local Council of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyiv Patriarchate,” reports the court’s website.

The claimant is declared to be "Primate of the Church, Patriarch of Kyiv and All Rus’-Ukraine Filaret".

The registration of the resolutions of the “Council” will mean the restoration of the UOC-KP as an official legal entity. The lawsuit also contains a demand that the inaction of the State Service for Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Conscience, which refused to register this decision in the state register, be declared illegal. 

The UOC-KP was liquidated after the “Unification Council” of the OCU in December 2018. However, later conflicts began in the new organization, and Filaret Denisenko held a "council", which recognized the invalidity of the liquidation of the "Kyiv Patriarchate". However, state bodies (already under President Vladimir Zelensky, in the summer of 2019) sided with the OCU, and representatives of the OCU said that Filaret Denisenko was unconsciously playing into the hands of the Russian special services. Since then, the “Honorary Patriarch of the OCU” has been actively developing its own structure, independent of the OCU, and trying to get the official registration of the UOC-KP renewed.

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