Ivano-Frankivsk authorities demand that President ban UOC in Ukraine

At an extraordinary session of the Ivano-Frankivsk City Council, the deputies approved the text of the appeal to the President in which they demanded that the UOC's activities be banned in Ukraine. The full text of the appeal is published by Ivano-Frankivsk mayor Ruslan Martsynkiv on his Facebook page.

The deputies pointed out that their document is a response to the appeal of the Ivano-Frankivsk diocese of the UOC to the President regarding the “harassment” (the deputies put this word in quotation marks – Ed.) on the part of the Carpathian officials and the mayor of Ivano-Frankivsk: “Today we consider it necessary to affirmatively express position of the Ivano-Frankivsk city territorial community regarding the need to terminate the activities of the Russian Orthodox Church, represented by the UOC (MP), in the territory of Ukraine.

The statement says that “the invaders do not hesitate to burn and shell even the churches that belonged to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate), in particular, one of the main shrines – the Sviatogorsk Lavra”, and “16 bishops of the UOC (MP) officially announced that their dioceses had stopped commemorating Patriarch Kirill because of his support for Russia’s war against Ukraine.” Despite the above facts, the deputies write that the UOC still retains jurisdictional connection with the ROC, and therefore "threatens the national security of Ukraine".

The authors point out that “Ukrainian law enforcement agencies have repeatedly identified signs of sabotage and reconnaissance activities in the premises of the religious communities of the Moscow Patriarchate” (in reality, law enforcement officers reported not a single case – Ed).

Also, as an argument to ban the UOC, the deputies point to the fact of the existence in Ukraine of “the only canonical autocephalous Orthodox Church – the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, headed by Metropolitan Epifaniy of Kyiv.”

As reported by the UOJ, the clergy and laity of the Ivano-Frankivsk diocese wrote an appeal to the Ukrainian President to save the Christ Nativity Cathedral from seizure.

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