Over half of Ukrainians believe that the country's authorities are violating the principle of the separation of power and interfering in church affairs, a poll conducted by Sociological Research Center "Sofia" revealed on Friday.
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 28th December, 2018) Over half of Ukrainians believe that the country's authorities are violating the principle of the separation of power and interfering in church affairs, a poll conducted by Sociological Research Center "Sofia" revealed on Friday.According to the poll, 52.5 percent of respondents said that the Ukrainian authorities were violating the principle of separation of church and state. However, 25.8 percent of those polled believed the authorities obeyed the principle.
Asked about their attitude toward the "unification council" held in Kiev in mid-December, 40 percent positively assessed the event, while 26.4 percent said they were not interested in it.
Respondents were more evenly divided regarding their opinion on the new autocephalous church 30.9 percent felt that its creation would lead to conflicts in society, while 27.4 percent thought it would help unify the country. Slightly over a quarter of respondents (25.4 percent) said the move would have no effect.
The poll was carried out between December 16-25 across Ukraine among 2,003 respondents aged over 18, with the margin of error not exceeding 2.2 percent.
On December 15, during the "unification council," Epiphany Dumenko was elected head of the "new church." The council was attended by representatives of mostly non-canonical structures, which are not recognized by the world's Orthodox churches except for the Constantinople Patriarchate. In early January 2019, Kiev expects to get a tomos of autocephaly from Constantinople.
The Moscow Patriarchate has repeatedly stressed that the process was nothing more than a "legalization of schism" and insisted that the council was a "complete failure" and no unification took place at all.
