A total of 77 churches and monasteries have been damaged or demolished during the military conflict in eastern Ukraine
Vienna–Dozens of priests of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Moscow Patriarchate (UOC MP) are leaving Ukraine in fear of persecutions, the head of the sector for interreligious liaisons at the Russian Orthodox Church’s Synodal Department for External Church Relations Priest Dimitry Safonov said on Monday.
“There are dozens of priests who had to leave Ukraine. The exact statistic is currently impossible. They are pressured into leaving Ukraine. Their families are getting death threats, they themselves are facing the threat of physical violence,” he told an Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) conference in Vienna on combating the intolerance and discrimination towards Christians.
A total of 77 churches and monasteries have been damaged or demolished during the military conflict in eastern Ukraine, the priest said.
In western Ukraine, religious crimes are manifested in the seizure of UOC MP churches, Father Dmitry said. “By now there have been credible reports about 19 churches of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church having been violently seized by the so-called “Kiev Patriarchate”*. This religious organization was formed in Ukraine in 1992 and has not been recognized by any of the Orthodox Churches worldwide,” the priest said.
All actions against the Ukrainian Orthodox Church “are motivated precisely by religious and national hatred,” he said.
Earlier the UOC MP chancellor Metropolitan Anthony of Borispol and Brovary complained to the Ukrainian president Pyotr Poroshenko about the seizure of the churches.
Nine UOC churches have been destroyed and another 77 damaged as a result of the hostilities in Donbass, which has 1,100 Orthodox churches and 17 monasteries, he said.
Read also:
* Killings in the name of Ukrainian land of Donbas, by Halyna Mokrushyna, April 7, 2015
On March 22, in his Sunday sermon, the Patriarch Philaret of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Kyiv Patriarchate explained to his parishioners in Volodymyrsky cathedral in Kyiv that Ukrainian soldiers who are killing civilians and rebels in Donbas do not transgress God’s commandment “thou shalt not kill”.
Patriarch Kirill calls for end to persecution of Ukraine’s Orthodox Christians, Interfax, Feb. 3, 2015
