“And again about real estate”: Religious scholars spoke about the property losses of the UOC after its final ban

Religious experts and DESS employees spoke about the consequences that await the Ukrainian Orthodox Church after its final ban. The first and most important thing to note is that the Church will lose the right to use property (church buildings, diocesan offices, and monasteries) that is publicly owned or has the status of architectural monuments. This was reported by DW.

«If the church is a legal entity, it can own property. A situation may arise where a church is built by a community in a village, but when the community changes jurisdiction, the church remains under the old jurisdiction, and the community is forced to build a new church. To avoid such absurd situations, it was decided back in the 1990s that churches do not have legal status and that property belongs to the community, not to the church as a whole. […] All contracts for the lease of state and communal property will be terminated and canceled. Legal entities and individuals who provide their property to the UOC-MP will also have to terminate these lease agreements,» — explained Oleksandr Sagan, head of the Department of Religious Studies at the Hryhorii Skovoroda Institute of Philosophy of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.

At the same time, Igor Lukyanov, an expert at the Institute for Religious Freedom, states that if the UOC nevertheless decides to comply with the requirements of the DESS, its activities will not be restricted and its property will not be seized. Otherwise, the churches of the UOC will be expropriated, taken over by the state, or transferred to other religious organizations.

“If the Kyiv Metropolis of the UOC independently fulfills the provisions of the DESS’s order to eliminate signs of affiliation with the ROC and reports on this in an appropriate manner, it will continue its activities in accordance with current legislation,” — Lukyanov said.

Earlier, Vyacheslav Gorshkov, head of the Department for Religious Affairs of the State Service for Ethnic Policy and Freedom of Conscience (DESS), spoke about the further steps that the State Service will take regarding the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in connection with its refusal to comply with the state’s requirements to eliminate its affiliation with the Moscow Patriarchate. According to the official, in the near future, the DESS will begin the procedure of deregistering all religious communities associated with the UOC and expropriating real estate that the Church uses on a leasehold and free-use basis.