The deputy from the "Servant of the People" wants to take the Kiev-Pechersk and Pochaev Lavra from the UOC-MP and transfer them to the OCU

The Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine will consider a resolution on the appeal of the Verkhovna Rada to the Cabinet of Ministers on the transfer for free use of the complexes of buildings of the Pochaev Assumption Lavra and the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU). The relevant bill № 8012 registered a deputy from the Servant of the People Andrey Bogdanets.

Draft resolution provides for:

• Contact the Cabinet of Ministers with a request to resolve issues transfer for free use complexes of buildings of the Pochaev Assumption Lavra and the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine.
• The Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine will need to within three months inform the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine about the implementation of this resolution.

The explanatory note to the bill says that for many years the leading Ukrainian spiritual and historical shrines - the Pochaev Assumption and Kiev-Pechersk Lavra - have been exclusively used by the Moscow Patriarchate through the UOC, which, despite changes in the charter of the UOC, allegedly remains part of the Russian Orthodox Church ( ROC). The author of the draft resolution claims that the Russian Federation during the war promotes propaganda and “Kremlin narratives” among the parishioners of the UOC, which he considers as the participation of the church in information activities and cooperation with the aggressor country.

In part 3 of Art. 17 of the Law of Ukraine "On freedom of conscience and religious organizations" says: “Religious buildings and property that are state property, may be transferred to alternate use by two or more religious communities by mutual agreement. In the absence of such consent, the state body determines the procedure for using religious building and property by concluding a separate agreement with each community”.

Also, in the explanatory note, they added that in open sources there is a letter from the Metropolitan of the UOC (MP) Onufriyin which he forbade his priests to perform alternate services. He published the text with the corresponding indication in one of the internal church documents - "Information letter on the legal position when considering issues of alternate use of places of worship", which once again confirms the monopoly of the UOC-MP on the use of religious buildings.

In this regard, as well as in order to protect national security and prevent manifestations of information propaganda, the author of the resolution proposes to regulate the issue of transferring laurels to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) at the legislative level.

Let us note that in the mentioned text of Onufry it is saidthat state authorities and their officials do not have the right to establish alternate worship in cases where churches are not state property or when the building is state property, but has already been transferred to the confession of the UOC earlier, referring to Art. 17 of the law "On Freedom of Conscience and Religious Organizations". This article defines the right of a state body to decide on the next worship service only when the issue of the first transfer of property is being decided religious organization.

As you know, both laurels are now controlled by the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC), which previously belonged to the Moscow Patriarchate. However On May 27, at the Council of the UOC, it was decided to secede from Moscow and Constantinople and declare independence from the ROC. One of the reasons for this decision was disagreement with the position of Patriarch Kirill regarding the war in Ukraine. We told in more detail about the results of the Council in the link material.

At the same time, as we see, the decision to separate from the ROC did not help the UOC protect itself from the intentions of the authorities to alienate church property from them.

There was no official reaction to this initiative of the MP from the UOC at the time of publication of this material.

Previously, we wrote that UOC-MP continues to be banned at local levels, and told that in the Ukrainian Union of Writers want to close the Kyiv Museum of Bulgakov.

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