UOC (MP) invents a way to leave communities without property in case of denomination change
With the help of ordinary church charters, the Ukrainian communities can be deprived of their property and denied any opportunity to influence the order in their church. Most believers do not know anything about the new documents that clergymen extensively approve.
In Ukraine there are over 34 thousand of religious communities. All they have to re-submit their charters. In particular, there are more than 12 thousand communities of the Moscow Patriarchate. This routine procedure suddenly received an unexpected turn: the documents submitted by the Moscow Patriarchate regional administrations contain new and very specific points which completely destroy the Ukrainian church structure, turning it into a mirror image of the Russian Orthodox Church. Thus, they virtually seized churches from their parishioners.
A copy of the new version of the UOC (MP) community charter in Adamivka village of Rivne region was taken for analysis. On the one hand, the clauses introduced indicate that all property, including temples, ostensibly remains in public ownership, but they have no right to dispose of them, as any deed of alienation should be performed by the diocese.
“A parish recognizes the exclusive rights of Sarny Eparchy Department to dispose of religious buildings and property owned by of Sarny Eparchy Department on the right of ownership and is on the balance sheet or in the use of the parish,” goes the document. “The immovable property of the parish can be alienated only on written consent and the blessing of the diocesan bishop of the Sarny Diocese of the UOC.
According to religious scholar Sergei Zdioruk, the only explanation for innovations is the fight against the exit of the communities from the UOC (MP). “They are trying to keep people with such illegal means. Like where they will go if the church is here? It is definitely a threat to public and national security. They take the property, value, funds.” said Zdioruk.
Withdrawing the right to dispose of the temple, the people in Adamivka also lose the right to their own opinion and their own choices where to pray. 100% vote of the parish council should be given from exit from the UOC (MP) and transfer to another jurisdiction. That is, a priest can say his “for” or “against”, who was appointed and can be revoked every moment by the Moscow Patriarchate leadership. How he votes is a rhetorical question. “It is a struggle with transitions, is a fight for his influential position. They do not want to lose this status. Moreover, if they lose – their bosses from Moscow will remove them,” adds a religionist.
But this is the statute of only one community - the village of Adamivka. Rivne regional administration, which collects documents of all religious communities in the region, claims that all the statutes submitted in the region are similar and 96 of them have already been registered. More than 500 charters are in the queue. Deputy Governor justified it saying that when they saw these innovations they immediately issued a written warning.
In other words - the regional administration recognizes the illegality of these provisions, but registers them instead of denying, shifting responsibility from themselves to the courts.
Ivan Papayani, Head of Department for Religion of the Ministry of Culture has shown that all charters obtained from Ternopil, Cherkasy and Zhytomyr regions are written on the same model.
We now know – they want to register such statutes in Kyiv, Zakarpattia and Lviv, where the Moscow Patriarchate in the most dire situation of parishioners loss. Some leaders of the UOC MP said that the model statute is written for communities in Kyiv, then it will be sent to the diocese, and immediately submitted for registration with the regional administration without any discussion in the community. This was reported by TSN.
