MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 06th January, 2019) Chief rabbi of Kiev and Ukraine Yaakov Bleich has expressed hope in his comments to the Glavcom news outlet on Sunday that the Ukrainian Constitutional Court will scrap the country's new law obliging the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate (UOC-MP) to change its name, because the legislation is "100 percent" unconstitutional.
The new law entered into force in Ukraine in December, requiring the UOC-MP to add the word "Russian" to its name. Kiev claims that the governing center of the church is situated in Russia, which Ukrainian authorities consider an "aggressor" state, and the UOC-MP's name should therefore reflect its ties to the country. The church has been given four months to change its name, but the UOC-MP has stressed that the governing center of the church was located not in Russia but in Kiev and, thus, the church should not fall under the law.
"It seems to me that the Constitutional Court will declare the adopted law unconstitutional. Because it clearly contradicts the Ukrainian constitution, 100 percent. International organizations � even those that support Ukraine � have already stated that this is not right and that what happened in the parliament is a provocation," the rabbi told the news outlet.
The chief rabbi noted that he would appeal to Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and the country's parliament to try and persuade them to postpone the enforcement of the new law while it is being scrutinized by the Constitutional Court.
"I have not talked to [head of new independent Ukrainian Orthodox church, Epiphany Dumenko] about this issue [of the new law] but I know that everybody agrees that there should be a line between a state and religion. The question is where this line lies," Bleich added.
The name-change law was adopted as part of the so-called church unification process in Ukraine, where the Orthodox community has been, until only recently, represented by three major structures, with only one of them being canonical.
Earlier on Sunday, the new Ukrainian Orthodox church, which does not include the UOC-MP, received the tomos from Constantinople, which officially granted it autocephaly despite the fact that it had not been recognized by other Orthodox churches. Under the tomos, the new church's jurisdiction will be restricted to Ukraine and it will not be authorized to appoint bishops and establish its parishes abroad, making it effectively dependent on Constantinople.
The Russian Orthodox Church has repeatedly stressed that the "unification" process was a legalization of schism and has refused to recognize the election of Epiphany Dumenko as the head of the new church at the so-called unification council. The UOC-MP criticized the decision to grant independence to the new church as well, stressing that the move was non-canonical and would bring division and trouble to Ukraine.
