Yurash: To cancel registration of OCU is like to reverse River Dnieper

Head of the Department for Religious Affairs and Nationalities of the Ministry of Culture Andrei Yurash. Photo: Censor. NET

It’s impossible to cancel the registration of the religious center of OCU just as it’s impossible to force the Dnieper to flow from the Black Sea, said Andrei Yurash, head of the Department of Religious and National Affairs at the Ministry of Culture, on Facebook.

“In vain you dream of rolling back and winding up objective processes: have you ever seen the Dnieper flowing not into the Black Sea but from the Black Sea? Of course, no ... you will also never see the absolute majority of conscious Ukrainians abandon the idea and the belief that their spiritual destiny can be realized only on the basis of an independent local tradition through the release of its energy from Moscow’s jurisdictional or any other’s yoke," he appealed to the plaintiffs, who had filed a lawsuit with the District Administrative Court of Kiev about the illegal registration of the religious center of OCU.

Yurash called the demand to cancel the registration of the Kiev Metropolis of the OCU as “complete absurdity and madness”, which is tantamount to a claim to rename the evening time.

“With the same persuasiveness one can sue the fact that, for example, evening reduces the power of the sun's rays, leads to darkness and therefore, threatens public order, whereby it must be forbidden, canceled and renamed, for example, into “the initial stage of the night" or "the prelude of the morning". That is complete absurdity and madness. The same absurdity and madness concerns the demand on cancellation of the registration of the Kiev Metropolis of the UOC (OCU),” he said.

The official is convinced that this lawsuit was allegedly prepared by the Law Department of the Canonical Church as a “gift” for the “shot down pilots”, gathered at Holy Vladimir Cathedral – participants of the Kiev Patriarchate’s “Local Council”, organized and conducted by the head of the UOC KP Filaret Denisenko (to be reminded, head of the UOC Law Department, Archpriest Alexander Bakhov, spoke about the unlawful registration of the OCU religious centre back on February 2, 2019,  while proceedings upon the lawsuit on the unlawful registration of the new religious center were opened two days before "the UOC-KP Council" – on June 18, 2019).

“It is no coincidence that it was probably this event that coincided with the other event, the gift of the UOC MP Law Department for the “downed pilots”, who convened at Holy Vladimir Cathedral: the Moscow Patriarchate in Ukraine filed a lawsuit with court demanding to cancel the registration of the Kiev Metropolis of the UOC (OCU) <...>, suggested Yurash. “It's obvious to everyone: these two synchronized events emerged to indicate the beginning, or more precisely, the continuation of the frontal attack on all components of the local Ukrainian tradition, which received legitimization after the recognition of the Ukrainian autocephaly by the maternal Ecumenical Patrarchate.”

According to the official, the court decision on this lawsuit should be "a test of adequacy and mental and value-based expediency of the Ukrainian judicial system".

It is noteworthy that the compulsory change of the legitimate name of the canonical Church (which was registered back in 1991) is not considered by Yurash to be so unnatural but viewed as a test of obedience to the state by the UOC.

The lawsuit on the illegal registration of the religious center of the OCU also alarmed former President Petro Poroshenko, who had been actively promoting the creation of this religious organization so much that he even demanded to convene a National Security and Defense Council on this occasion. “The lawsuit of the Ukrainian branch of the Russian Orthodox Church, demanding the cancellation of the state registration of the Autocephalous Orthodox Church of Ukraine, our Church, is not a church issue, it is a matter of Ukraine’s national security, which requires attention of both the President and the National Security Council,” he said. Poroshenko shared with the public that he considers the thesis of non-interference of the state in the affairs of the Church only a beautiful theory.

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