“They will not go to the garages!": MP Poturaev does not believe that the UOC will go underground

Ukrainian MP and head of the committee for humanitarian and information policy Nikita Poturaev has said that the Ukrainian Orthodox Church will not go underground after its final ban. The MP is convinced that only a few people in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church are ready for such a step, while the majority need familiar conditions. About this he told in an interview with the publication Telegraf.

“They will not! Well who!!! Pasha on the “600th” Mercedes (Metropolitan of the UOC Vyshgorod and Chernobyl, vicar of the Kiev Metropolis, vicar of the Assumption Kiev-Pechersk Lavra Pavel (Lebed)- ed.) in the underground in the garage?! I ask you… What are we talking about, well it’s ridiculous!”, — said Poturaev.

The MP added that the UOC communities need the status of religious organizations, “otherwise they will not survive at all.”

“They will not go to the garages. They need a priest, they need a church and that’s it. There are isolated cases when communities have gone without popes, and the popes stay with grandmothers and serve in the houses. But it’s not underground, it’s not a catacomb church. Well, let them serve and let them serve. But I still don’t believe in it. They need to have the status of religious organizations, because without it they do not live at all”, — summed up Nikita Poturaev.

We shall remind you that earlier we reported that the authors of the law No 8371 aimed at banning the Ukrainian Orthodox Church expect that as a result of its adoption the UOC will split into several parts and gradually cease to exist.