Metropolitan Vladimir called upon Ukrainian President to give up the practice of alternate Divine services

The Primate of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church His Beatitude Metropolitan Vladimir of Kiev and All Ukraine sent a letter to the Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko asking him to give up the practice of alternate Divine services.

This letter was prompted by many incidents of permission given to the Greek Catholics and to the activists of the schismatic ‘Kievan Patriarchate’ with support of secular authorities to hold the so called ‘alternate Divine services’ in the churches of the canonical Orthodox Church.

His Beatitude Metropolitan Vladimir asks President Yushchenko to entrust the Ukrainian Government with drafting and bringing a bill in Parliament, which will provide that a paragraph about alternate Divine services is withdrawn from the Law ‘On the Freedom of Conscience and on Religious Organizations’.

The letter to the President emphasized that ‘Almost twelve years of the practice of alternate Divine services have been full of conflicts, provoked interchurch clashes and shown that religious organizations were in fact held hostage to local authorities with their prejudices. Religion in Ukraine is perceived as the living tradition rather than as a formal appreciation of tradition, and alternate Divine services therefore challenge religious feelings of the believers’.

His Beatitude Metropolitan Vladimir sent similar letters to the Ukrainian Prime Minister Yu.Timoshenko, speaker of Supreme Rada V.Litvin, secretary of the National Defense Council P.Poroshenko and Minister of Justice R.Zvarych.

From the Ukrainian Orthodox Church Press Service

See also:

• Religious situation in Ukraine