Without rectors’ consent: VR urges to simplify transfers of parishes to OCU

The Verkhovna Rada's State Committee for Humanitarian and Information Policy suggested that the parliament develop and adopt a law that would make it easier for a religious community to change a confession if its rector is against it. This is stated in the Recommendations of the Committee, published on June 28, 2022 on the website of the State Service of Ukraine for Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Speech.

“The Verkhovna Rada is invited to consider and adopt draft laws <…> regarding the proper regulation and simplification of the procedure for changing the affiliation of a religious community in case of disagreement of its leader with such a change, etc.,” the document says.

The Verkhovna Rada Committee also recommends that the State Service of Ukraine for Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Conscience “develop methodological recommendations for sensitization aimed at clarifying the right of religious communities to change their canonical subordination.”

Recall that in the village of Ozero in Volhynia, believers were “transferred” to the OCU, while they and the rector were praying in their church. Moreover, in Khmelnitsky, activists broke into the temple of the UOC and “transferred” it to the OCU, also without the participation of the priest of the temple.

As the UOJ wrote, the Verkhovna Rada committee called for a ban on confessions involved in the Russian aggression.

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