UKRAINE WINS APPROVAL FOR HISTORIC SEPARATION FROM RUSSIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH
from: Reuters

(11 Oct.) Ukraine secured approval on Thursday, 11 October, to establish an independent church in what Kiev says is a vital step against Russian meddling in its affairs, but the Russian clergy fiercely opposes as the biggest split in Christianity for a thousand years. A three-day synod presided over by the Ecumenical Patriarch in Istanbul, seat of the global spiritual leader of roughly 300 million Orthodox Christians, endorsed Ukraine’s request for an “autocephalous” (independent) church.

The synod will "proceed to the granting of Autocephaly to the Church of Ukraine,' a statement said. The synod took several decisions to pave the way for Ukraine to set up its church, including rehabilitating a Ukrainian patriarch excommunicated by the Russian Orthodox Church for leading a breakaway church in the early 1990s.

In retaliation, the Russian Orthodox Church said it would break eucharistical relations with the Ecumenical Patriarchate, Interfax news agency quoted a spokesman as saying. The tussle over Ukraine's spiritual future flows from the poisoning of relations between Kiev and Moscow after Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the outbreak of separatist fighting in Ukraine’s east that has killed over 10,000 people.

Ukraine accuses the Russian Orthodox Church of wielding a pernicious influence on its soil, allowing itself to be used as a tool of the Kremlin to justify Russian expansionism and support of separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine. "The decisions of the Ecumenical Patriarch and Synod finally dispelled the imperial illusions and chauvinistic fantasies of Moscow," Poroshenko said. "It is a question of our independence, national security, statehood, a question of world geopolitics."

The Russian Orthodox Church has compared Ukraine’s moves for independence to the Great Schism of 1054 that split western and eastern Christianity, and warned they could lead to an irreversible rupture in the global Orthodox community. On Thursday, its spokesman said Istanbul had "crossed a red line" by reversing the excommunication of Patriarch Filaret.

Filaret hopes to lead the independent church. Filaret told reporters that Thursday's decision paved the way for Ukraine to merge its three main Orthodox church branches into the new independent entity. [read more...]

UZBEKISTAN: UNDER-18S PRESSURED, ILLEGAL RAIDS, LEGAL BOOKS CONFISCATED
by Mushfig Bayram: Forum 18 News Service

(19 Oct.) The ordinary police and SSS secret police have long openly carried out surveillance of anyone of any faith meeting for worship. Children and young people attending meetings for worship are especially targeted by the authorities. In Tashkent Region a group of 40 Protestants were illegally raided, detained and questioned, and police applied "psychological pressure" resulting in two being hospitalised. Police did nothing to stop four unknown women who accompanied them on the raid stealing property from female Protestants.

In the north-western Navoi [Navoiy] Region, after an illegal raid on a state-registered Baptist Church, police confiscated three Uzbek-language New Testaments, two Kazakh-language Bibles, and one copy of a book for children entitled "Stories from the Bible." Despite the Pastor being able to prove that the books were bought legally and had passed state censorship, courts have ordered that the books stay confiscated and be given to the Religious Affairs Committee in Tashkent. "It is a total nonsense," local Protestants stated. "This means that the Church cannot keep its legally bought Christian literature in its building." Judges and police have denied the flagrant breaches of the rule of law and due process that happened in these cases.

On 30 September, about 20 officers of Bostanlyk District Police in Tashkent Region raided a group of 40 Protestants from an ethnic Korean church and other Protestant churches meeting at a Protestant centre in Kyzl-Su, a Protestant who asked not to be named for fear of state reprisals told Forum 18 on 5 October. The police arrived in eight police cars in the middle of the day. Leading the raid were officers Khusniddin Sharipov and Shakhzod (who would not give his last name).

The police also brought four unidentified women with them, who began "pushing retreat participants around, searched the bags of women only, and stole anything they wanted from the bags," the Protestant stated. When the Protestants complained to the accompanying police officers, "they did not react at all" to the open theft of private property. [read more...]

VERKHOVNA RADA OF UKRAINE TRANSFERS ST. ANDREW'S CHURCH TO ECUMENICAL PATRIARCHATE
from: Religious Information Service of Ukraine

(18 Oct.) The Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine has passed the law on the transfer of St. Andrew's Church to the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople for perpetual free of charge usage, Ukrinform reports. "The decision on transfer of the St. Andrew's Church will help to accelerate the process of granting the Tomos of Autocephaly - the recognition of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine by the world Orthodox Christianity," the explanatory note says.

Presenting the bill, representative of the President of Ukraine in the Verkhovna Rada, Iryna Lutsenko noted that the transfer of this particular religious building would have a unique, both practical and symbolic-spiritual significance.

"This will present the exclusive respect of Ukraine to the authority and the role of the Mother Church in the history of the development of the Ukrainian spiritual tradition and will unambiguously contribute to the process of granting the Tomos of Autocephaly of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, i.e., the establishment of an independent (autocephalous) jurisdiction, which will become worthy and equal among other local Orthodox churches of the world Orthodox Christianity," the explanatory note says. [read more...]

CONSTANTINOPLE REFUSES TO SEVER COMMUNION WITH RUSSIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH (UPDATED)
from: Interfax-Religion

(19 Oct.) Constantinople remains in communion with the Russian Orthodox Church despite the severance of Eucharistic communion between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Constantinople Patriarchate, the exarchate of Russian parishes in Western Europe said in a statement on Friday.

"Dear brothers and sisters, we inform you that our bishops and exarchs who are in the jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarchate remain in full communion with the entire Orthodox Church. We also inform you that the Ecumenical Patriarchate has not severed communion with the Moscow Patriarchate and continues to pray for it in accordance with the order established in the diptych," the exarchate said.

"All Orthodox Christians can fully take part in liturgical life and church sacraments at our parishes," the document said. The exarchate of the Constantinople Patriarchate called on all priests, deacons, monastics, and laypeople of the Russian exarchate in Western Europe to pray for the unity of the Church.

The Russian exarchate was created in 1921, when Patriarch Tikhon of Moscow and All Russia appointed Metropolitan Eulogius, who was in Paris, as an official representative of the Russian Church in Western Europe. In 1927, the Karlovatz Synod suspended Eulogius from service and severed communion with him, which divided Russian emigrants into those faithful to the Synod and those faithful to the Moscow Patriarchate. [read more...]

UNIAN: KYIV PATRIARCHATE SAYS UKRAINIAN ORTHODOX LAVRAS SHOULD BELONG TO UKRAINIAN CHURCH
from: Kyiv Post

(19 Oct.) Press secretary of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyiv Patriarchate (UOC-KP), Archbishop Yevstratiy (Zorya) says the Ukrainian Orthodox monasteries, namely the Kyiv-Pechersk, Pochayiv and Sviatohirsk lavras, should belong to the Ukrainian church.

"As for the lavras, they are in state ownership and were only handed over to the monasteries of the Moscow Patriarchate for use. Our principled position is that these Ukrainian shrines will belong to the Ukrainian church through history, like the shrines in Russia, Romania, etc.," he told the Ukrainian news outlet Glavred on October 19. However, according to the archbishop, it is still premature to make predictions on property belonging of the lavras.

"It's too early to predict how it will happen. Most likely, by voluntary decision of the majority of monks of these monasteries. But one thing can be argued now with accuracy and full responsibility: this process will be without violence and won't lead to any negative consequences for the church and Ukraine. Perhaps this will happen in a year, three, five or 10 years. In fact, it's not so important. The main thing is that everyone is aware of the inevitability of this move completion and the need to respect non-violence principles," he said. [read more...]

DONBAS: DONETSK: PLACES OF WORSHIP SEIZED, SEALED
by Felix Corley: Forum 18 News Service

(12 Oct.) Rebel authorities of the self-declared Donetsk People's Republic, an unrecognised entity in eastern Ukraine, have continued in 2018 to confiscate or seal places of worship to prevent religious communities from meeting. A Baptist Church in the southern seaside town of Novoazovsk, confiscated and sealed against entry in September, is the latest known confiscation. Also seized in 2018 was a Baptist Church in Makeyevka.

Pro-Russian rebels seized parts of Ukraine's Donetsk Region in April 2014 and proclaimed what they called the Donetsk People's Republic (DPR). Heavy fighting ensued. The rebel administration currently controls nearly half of Ukraine's Donetsk Region.

Between 2014 and the end of 2017, the rebel authorities are known to have confiscated or sealed against entry other places of worship, including a Seventh-day Adventist church and a Protestant-run University. Members of religious communities of a variety of faiths told Forum 18 that they fear that meeting for worship in private homes could lead to raids and possible punishment.

Sergei Gavrish, the head of the Religion and Nationalities Department at the Culture Ministry in Donetsk, refused to discuss why the authorities have seized numerous places of worship. "Our Ministry has no involvement in this," he told Forum 18 on 11 October. "I don't know who does this." The State Property Fund often seizes the places of worship on the pretext that they are unused and without an owner. Religious communities contest these claims. Officials of the Property Fund refused to discuss the seizures with Forum 18. [read more...]