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Kiev wants to subjugate completely the Ukrainian Ortodox Church (UOC) and make it illegal, RIA Novosti reports. According to Metropolitan Hilarion, the chairman of the Department of External Church Relations, for this reason various draft laws appear in the interior of the Ukrainian government.
The priest compared the proposal to change the name of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church into the Russian Church in Ukraine with the actions of fascists in Germany in the 1930s.
For good reason this idea arose just at the moment when the conflict between Ukraine and Russia entered the acute phase. Changing the church name is like attaching the Jews a yellow six-pointed star badge in Nazi Germany.
"The Ukrainian authorities are going to mark the church as a hostile organization," the representative of the Russian Orthodox Church believes. There is no doubt that the new draft law was careated for this purpose.
Metropolitan Hilarion recalled that the UOC can not be called a Russian church. It is Ukrainian because "believers of this church consider themselves as Ukrainians, they are patriots of their country," he is convinced.
Earlier, the Holy Synod of the UOC called on the Verkhovna Rada to reject considering bills relating to the activities of the UOC.
The UOC stressed that with these documents Kiev wanted to legally eliminate the Ukrainian Orthodox Church through a raider seizure, name changing, illicit interference in its administration and the capture of property (shrines, temples and monasteries).
Russkiy Mir
