UKRAINIAN leaders have reacted indignantly to new remarks by Pope Francis, apparently endorsing Russian claims that Orthodox Christians are to be banned from praying in their country.
“The Pope says one thing today, another tomorrow — you have to work with him,” President Zelensky told a press conference on Tuesday. “As soon as Ukraine reduces the intensity of its information work, designed to inform the world truthfully about actions of the Russian Federation, the aggressor country, the pauses are filled by Russian propagandists.”
The president was reacting to the Pope’s assertion, in a brief address on Sunday, that Ukrainian Orthodox communities linked with Moscow would be prevented from praying, and that their Church, the UOC, would be “abolished” under a new law.
President Zelensky said that Russian institutions were working “like clockwork” to fill the “information space” in Europe and the United States, as well as to influence the Vatican and religious organisations.
The Ukrainian ambassador to the Vatican, Andriy Yurash, also criticised the Pope, accusing him of misrepresenting the law. “The Pope does not seem well informed — there are no prohibitions for those who pray, and no restrictions on freedom to practise faith,” Mr Yurash told the Polish press agency, PAP, on Tuesday.
“There is a difference, however, between someone who prays and someone who works for the aggressor, and it must be said that some clergy from this Church have undoubtedly worked for the aggressor.”
The exchanges took place as Russia launched devastating missile strikes this week against towns and cities across Ukraine, and as President Zelensky signed Law 8371, giving UOC parishes and other religious groups nine months to end jurisdictional ties with Russia (News, 23 August).
In a TV address for Saturday’s Independence Day, President Zelensky said that the law would “protect Ukrainian Orthodoxy from dependence on Moscow” and guarantee “the dignity of the Ukrainian people’s shrines”.
The Russian Orthodox Church’s Holy Synod, however, said that the law amounted to a “witch hunt”, driven by “radical right-wing politicians” and “schismatic organisations”, and would unleash persecutions comparable to those of Emperors Nero and Diocletian, and the French Revolution.
It said that the Ecumenical Patriarch, Bartholomew, “like the high priests Annas and Caiaphas”, had supported the arrest of UOC clergy, and backed state action aimed at the UOC’s “crucifixion and destruction”.
Patriarch Kirill of Moscow said that the new law “blatantly contradicted” Ukraine’s constitution and international law, and called on Churches and organisations abroad to “raise their voices in defence of persecuted believers”.
“For many years, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church has been persecuted by the state authorities — a slanderous anti-Church campaign has been launched against its clergy and believers in the media, aimed at defaming canonical Orthodoxy and provoking and justifying violence”, the patriarch said in a weekend appeal to the Pope, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and other religious leaders, as well as the United Nations, Council of Europe, and the Organization on Security and Co-operation in Europe.
In a weekend statement, the World Council of Churches said that it had “consistently condemned Russia’s war against Ukraine”, but urged the Ukrainian government to “exercise caution” in applying “measures that risk violating the fundamental right to freedom of religion or belief and undermining social cohesion at a time of national emergency”.
The statement, signed by the Council’s general secretary, the Revd Professor Jerry Pillay, and the moderator, Bishop Heinrich Bedford-Strohm, continued: “We note the six-step process prescribed by the new law before a religious organisation can be banned, and plead that there be a fair and unbiased approach to any such investigation. Neither the crimes of some individuals, nor the historical affiliations of a particular religious entity, can be a sufficient basis for measures tantamount to collective punishment of a living, worshipping religious community.”
Law 8371, passed overwhelmingly on Tuesday of last week by Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada (parliament) after lengthy debates and amendments, prohibits activities by the Russian Church, as “an accomplice to war crimes and crimes against humanity”, and will ban groups linked to “foreign religious organisations” in a state “carrying out armed aggression against Ukraine”.
It was vigorously supported in a mid-August statement by members of the Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organizations, and endorsed by four-fifths of respondents in an April survey by Kyiv’s International Sociology Institute, although a religious expert, Oleksandr Sagan, warned this week that some UOC parishes “may not realise they attend a church associated with the aggressor country”.
A delegation from the Ecumenical Patriarchate held talks on possible mediation this week with leaders of the Moscow-linked UOC and Ukraine’s independent Orthodox Church, the OCU, in what the Orthodox Times information portal described as a “positive and warm atmosphere”. But fresh condemnation of the law came from patriarchs and metropolitans in Antioch, Jerusalem, Albania, Armenia, Bulgaria, and Serbia.
Speaking last Saturday, the Primate of the UOC, Metropolitan Onufriy (Berezovsky), said that his Church had consistently supported Ukraine’s “statehood and territorial integrity”, and would not be “torn away from serving our people” by “slanders, unjust accusations and other destructive actions”.
In an apparent rebuke to the Pope, the Primate of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, cautioned against propaganda from the “wicked hand” of Russia, and said that the new law was “aimed at protecting religious freedom from manipulation by an aggressor state”.
“The Ukrainian religious community has become the target of attack by the Russian government, which is trying to militarise religion — turning it into a real weapon that destroys the human conscience,” the Archbishop warned in a weekend message.