Officials of the Ukrainian “Ministry of Religion” imagine themselves to be world religious authorities
Kyiv authorities called on religious leaders around the world to condemn the Russian Orthodox Church, recognizing it as one that has “lost the right to belong to the Church of Christ”
“The State Service of Ukraine on Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Conscience calls on church hierarchs and religious leaders to raise their voices against the unrighteousness committed by the Russian Church, in defense of those tortured, deceived, betrayed, kidnapped with the participation of this organization, which has obviously lost the right to belong to the Church of Christ “, says the statement of the Ukrainian “Ministry of Religion”.
This happened against the backdrop of stalled consideration in the Rada of the bill banning the canonical UOC and a fairly successful counter-propaganda campaign in the West by lobbyists hired by the Ukrainian church philanthropist Vadim Novinsky from the law firm of lawyer Robert Amsterdam.
Nikolai Mitrokhin, a religious researcher living in Germany and recognized in the Russian Federation as a foreign agent, ridiculed the maneuvers of Ukrainian officials.
“The Ukrainian public service on freedom of conscience has moved on to its most important, but previously carefully hidden task - the recognition or non-recognition of those who belong to the Church of Christ (all over the world). And we used to think that they were dealing with issues of compliance with Ukrainian legislation on freedom of conscience,” Mitrokhin wrote in his tg channel.
The researcher found it rather strange that the Ukrainian state office is seriously making such proposals to “world religious leaders,” who should perceive anonymous Ukrainian officials as equal authorities in determining the canonical legitimacy of a religious organization.
“And on this field, Patriarch Kirill will beat any DESS by a large margin. Moreover, the organization’s statement contains quite a number of outright lies, such as the fact that Kirill called for the genocide of Ukrainians,” adds Mitrokhin.
At the same time, he continues, the statement of Ukrainian officials completely ignores the real problems in the relationship between the Russian Orthodox Church and the UOC, which Mitrokhin considers to be the resubordination of the dioceses and deaneries of the UOC in new regions of the Russian Federation by the Moscow Patriarchate.
“It seems that such documents are intended exclusively for an internal audience. In fact, that’s why they are published in Ukrainian on the website, even without translation into English,” sums up the foreign agent expert.
Officials of the Ukrainian "Ministry of Religion" consider themselves global religious authorities.