UOC representatives speak at the Conference of European Churches in Tallinn

Eustratiy Zoria and Volodymyr Bureha at the CEC Assembly in Tallinn. Photo: 2023cecassembly.

From June 14th to June 21st, 2023, the Assembly of the Conference of European Churches is taking place in Tallinn. Well-known religious speakers such as Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, Patriarch Bartholomew, former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, and others are speaking at the conference.

This year, the OCU became a participant in the Conference, which led to the Serbian Church deciding to suspend its membership.

The spokesperson for the OCU, Eustratiy Zorya, and religious scholar and member of the Expert Commission on Ethnopolitics, Andriy Smirnov, spoke at the conference in Tallinn on behalf of the OCU.

Representing the UOC, Vice-Rector and professor of KDAiS, Volodymyr Bureha, and the head of the resource "Dialog.Tut," Yuliya Kominko, gave speeches.

The UOJ addressed the DECR UOC with a question regarding whether the Ukrainian Orthodox Church sent its representatives to CEC Assembly and received a response that Volodymyr Bureha and Yuliya Kominko received personal invitations and went to Tallinn privately.

In his speech, Volodymyr Bureha stated that in a situation where "people die every day, children die, homes are destroyed, someone is burying a loved one, as Christians, we face the first question: where is God in this war?"

Yuliya Kominko noted that the believers of the UOC are not enemies of their Homeland; nevertheless, Ukraine has announced a course towards a legislative ban on the UOC. The journalist mentioned that a petition calling not to ban the UOC has been signed by 25,000 people, yet there is a real threat of religious discrimination against believers in the country.

The final statement of the CEC Assembly on Ukraine reads: " Churches, especially those currently divided according to political or regional alignment, contribute to the conflict and suffering and must seek to be peacemakers, agents of justice and truth, advocates of accountability and human rights.”

As earlier reported, Patriarch Bartholomew believes the ecumenical dialogue is addressed to Islam and Judaism.

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