We will remind, earlier Metropolitan Kliment (Vecherya) commented on the legislative ban of the UOC. The bishop explained that it is impossible to ban the Church as any other legal organization, and such a decision of the Parliament will create more problems for the government, then for the UOC.
The hierarch of the UOC compared the adoption of Law No. 8371 with the actions of the Bolsheviks of Lenin's time
The head of the Synodal Information and Education Department of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, Metropolitan Kliment (Vecherya), has spoken about his impressions of the adoption in the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine of draft law No. 8371 aimed at banning the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. The bishop is convinced that this law directly contradicts the so-called decommunization, as it fully repeats the ideas of the Bolsheviks of Lenin’s time. About this Metropolitan Kliment told in a comment to the studio bbc.com.
“It is obvious, and the legal department of the Verkhovna Rada itself has written about it lengthily, that the new law goes against the Ukrainian constitution and a number of obligations of Ukraine, which it must comply with under international agreements, including on the way to integration into the European space. Apparently, those who lobbied for this law are deliberately interested in creating such a scandal. However, somehow few people pay attention to the fact that first of all the just adopted law violates another law — on decommunization. One of Lenin’s first decrees after coming to power was a decree on the Church, and then on confiscating its property and deregistering it. Everything that has recently happened around the adoption of Law 8371 has caused some kind of persistent restoration in our memory of all the things that not only brought us back to the atheistic ideology of Soviet times, but also to the methods by which this ideology was realized,” — Metropolitan Kliment said.
The head of the press service of the UOC added that the law No. 8371 works to divide society into “right” and “wrong”, which as a result will bring serious internal problems to the state.
“The Soviet power tried to ban the Church with many laws. And when it realized that it was impossible to do it by laws, then it began to shoot millions of believers of different confessions, including those loyal to it. Of course, in the XXI century this is no longer possible, but society should be very attentive to the appearance of any manifestations of segregation of Ukrainian citizens into right and wrong. After all, those who did not understand Jesus Christ crucified him solely on political charges,” — the bishop added.
Read also
