Ukraine's President Calls Religious Leaders to Participate in Celebration of 1025th Anniversary of Rus Baptism

The 1025th anniversary of Christianization of Kievan Rus’ should become a holiday of Ukraine's European identity triumph. “We should celebrate this anniversary not only as a holiday of Christians, but also as a triumph of Ukrainian statehood and Ukraine’s European identity, cultural and spiritual rise and key to successful democratic modernization of Ukrainian society,” the President stated at the meeting with leaders of churches and religious organizations. So reported the presidential web-site on 23 April.

The Head of State urged leaders of churches and religious organizations to participate in preparations for the holiday.

The President expressed confidence that state bodies would provide comprehensive support to religious organizations in the implementation of their projects and initiatives dedicated to this anniversary.

The President supports initiative on enhancing cooperation between state bodies and leaders of churches and religious organizations.

In the course of the meeting, Administrator of Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate), Metropolitan Anthony of Boryspil expressed gratitude to the President for constant attention to state-church relations and conveyed greetings from Metropolitan Volodymyr, Metropolitan of Kiev and all Ukraine. “UOC supports constructive state-church interaction in different spheres the result of which are several legislative initiatives aimed at regulation and improvement of state-church relations,” Metropolitan Anthony said.

According to him, these legislative initiatives touch upon such issues as establishment of educational institutions by religious organizations, participation of the clergy in the system of compulsory social insurance, amendments to the Tax Code regarding tax exemption of real estate belonging to religious organizations etc.

Primate of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, Archbishop Sviatoslav of Kyiv and Halych expressed gratefulness to the President for his support of the initiatives aimed at the improvement of welfare and moral state of Ukrainian people. He stressed that recent active dialogue between religious organizations and state bodies facilitated development of legislative base of state-church relations.

“There is a great attention of the President and people’s deputies to the issues accumulated for decades. It is a pleasure that these issues transform into the draft laws developing state-church relations,” he stressed.

Primate of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyivan Patriarchate, Patriarch Filaret of Kyiv and All Rus’ - Ukraine expressed belief that such meetings were useful for the state, churches and religious organizations. “Our cooperation is noticed not only in Europe, but also in the world. We are glad that we can contribute to consolidation of Ukrainian society,” he said.

Patriarch Filaret expressed gratitude to Viktor Yanukovych for preparations to celebration of the 1025th anniversary of Christianization of Kievan Rus’. “We hope that celebration of the 1025th anniversary will open the door to Europe for Ukraine like Christianization opened the door to Europe for Rus’,” he said and added that the event would facilitate the spread of Christian faith, cultural and spiritual values of our nation to European countries.

In the course of the meeting, the parties also discussed ways of settlement of important problems of churches and religious organizations. These are particularly, granting the legal entity status to churches, state recognition of diplomas and academic degrees of graduates of religious educational institutions and social equalization of rights of students and teachers of religious universities with students and teachers of secular universities.

Primate of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church Sviatoslav asked the President to facilitate establishment of cooperation between state bodies and religious organizations for them “to have an opportunity to discuss problematic issues”.

As the result of the meeting, the President gave certain instructions. Viktor Yanukovych also supported the initiative of religious organizations and offered them to participate in the meetings of the Cabinet of Ministers for them “to express their opinion and suggestions”.