Parubiy gathers enemies of UOC to resolve the issue of the Unified Local Church

Speaker of the Verkhovna Rada, Andrei Parubiy, held a meeting on the creation of the Unified Local Church and convened active opponents of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

"Our meeting is that we could discuss with each other how the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine can facilitate the formation of the Unified Local Ukrainian Orthodox Church," the Ukrainian Pravda cites Parubiy. "We have already taken an important step by voting for an appeal to the All-Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew. This was a very important decision. After that, I met with him – the Patriarch highly appreciated the decision of the Verkhovna Rada. We discussed with him a lot of steps that we could take so that the idea of creating the Unified Local Orthodox Church in Ukraine could be realized."

The church issue was discussed by: Ivan Krulko and Yaroslav Markevich – people's deputies, one of the initiators of the scandalous bill No. 5309 directed against the UOC; Nikolai Kniazhitsky – head of the parliamentary Committee for Culture and Spirituality, who approved anti-church bills; Alexander Tkachenko, the general director of the TV channel "1 + 1", known for his reports against the UOC, and also, as can be seen in the photo, the head of the Department for Religious Affairs of the Ministry of Culture Andrei Yurash and the religious expert Yuri Sagan, also known for their aggressive stance towards the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

The participants of the meeting agreed to work together on the promotion of the bills known in Ukraine and abroad as anti-church, and an invitation to the Verkhovna Rada of Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople.

As we know, the Constantinople Patriarchate recognizes as canonical only the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. It is supported by the hierarchs of all Local Orthodox Churches, who the speaker of the Kiev Patriarchate, Yevstratiy Zoria, accused of corruption.

According to the Constitution, the Church in Ukraine is separated from the state.