MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 23rd December, 2018) Rural councils of Ukraine's Vinnytsia Region said they had been requested to exert intense pressure on country priests of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) and urged to stage provocations near UOC churches, inciting Ukrainians to join the "autocephalous" church, the UOC education department said in a press release on Sunday.
"According to the information provided by some heads of rural councils in the Bershad district of the Vinnytsia Region, on December 22, they received calls from deputy head of the district state administration Olshevskyi V.E. requesting to exert intense pressure on UOC country priests, stage provocations near churches and incite people to leave the UOC to join sectarian [autocephalous] Ukrainian Orthodox Church ... The UOC clergy believes that above-mentioned unlawful actions of officials have been endorsed by governing state bodies of the city of Vinnytsia," the press release said.
According to the press release, Olshevskyi pledged that if a rural council head manages to make a rural priest join the so-called independent Ukrainian Orthodox Church, the Bershad district's local authorities would ensure the presence of "parishioners" at staged parish meetings of villagers.
The Ukrainian national police have pledged to take adequate actions in response to illegal raiding of churches regardless of their religious affiliation.
Despite the pledge not to interfere in church's affairs, the Ukrainian authorities do it regularly. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, for instance, secured a pledge from Constantinople to a grant a tomos on autocephaly to the newly-created church, which was condemned by the Russian Orthodox Church as schismatic. In October, the Ukrainian parliament approved a bill on handing St. Andrew's Church, located in Kiev, over to the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople for permanent use. Poroshenko's adviser Rostyslav Pavlenko went to Istanbul to observe the Synod meeting and discuss with the Constantinople patriarch the issue of autocephaly.
The canonical UOC has also repeatedly reported about the cases of attacks on its priests by radicals and the seizure of its churches by representatives of non-canonical religious structures.
