UOC considers fires in the churches of terror

MOSCOW, 24 APR – RIA Novosti. The canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church called terror fires in their wards and asked President Vladimir Zelensky to take under personal control the investigation of such cases, said the Manager of the UOC-MP, Metropolitan Antonii of Boryspil and Brovary.

Previously, the Odessa Department of the state service for emergency situations reported that at night on Friday in Odessa, a fire occurred on the territory of the Holy Dormition men’s monastery of the UOC, injured the priest who helped to extinguish the fire, burned two cars and outbuildings. Prosecuted.

“I’m not afraid to call the incident a terror. After all, in Odessa, and in such cases, Bukovina, Sumy and Rivne region under direct threat was posed to the lives of many people. And that moment clearly can not be left without attention and response… It would be important to the President of Ukraine took under personal control the progress of the investigations and instructed to inform him of the results of the cases on acts of vandalism and attacks on temples of the UOC in the previous five years,” said Anthony page on the social network Facebook.

According to him, the fire at the Holy Dormition monastery became in the last two weeks is the fourth such incident. He noted that during the fire at the Odessa monastery managed to throw the Molotov cocktail from my car, which was near the gas pipe. It helped to avoid large number of victims among the monks.

“In the expert community was information that on the eve of Easter the office of the President lowered some media “Temnik”, which pointed to the need to actively discredit the Ukrainian Orthodox Church his Beatitude Metropolitan Onufry (because he, in particular, was never urged parishioners to pray for the holiday exclusively at home). We very much hope that this is nothing more than unverified data. However, if the information is true, then the question arises – does the President, that certain representatives of his office used far from the norms of law and morality technique?” – said the Metropolitan.

Anthony believes that Zelensky need to Commission on the audit of a number of media on the subject of discrimination on religious grounds and incitement of religious hatred.

Aggression and pressure on the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church intensified after the creation of the so-called “Orthodox churches of Ukraine” (ptsu) – a schismatic organization formed in late 2018 at the initiative of the Ukrainian authorities and the Patriarchate of Constantinople by the merger of the other two schismatic structures. Received from Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople’s Tomos of “autocephaly”, in fact she was almost completely dependent on Constantinople. The only canonical Church in Ukraine is the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.