ZELENSKIY VISITING LEADER OF ORTHODOX CHURCH OF UKRAINE AT KYIV MONASTERY
from: Kyiv Post

(30 Apr.) Ukrainian President-elect Volodymyr Zelenskiy and head of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, Metropolitan Epiphany of Kyiv and all Ukraine, are meeting at St. Michael’s Golden-Domed Monastery in the Ukrainian capital.

"Ukrainian President-elect Volodymyr Zelenskiy and the Primate of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine Metropolitan Epiphany are meeting at St. Michael's Golden-Domed Monastery of Kyiv," the Orthodox Church of Ukraine said on Facebook on Tuesday.

The Church did not provide any details about the meeting. The post contained a photograph of Zelenskiy and Metropolitan Epiphany. (The photo in this article is of Metropolitan Epiphanius in his enthronement ceremony at the Saint Sophia's Cathedral on Feb. 3, 2019, in Kyiv.)

Zelenskiy is the country's sixth president in almost 28 years of independence. That is more heads of state than any other post-Soviet country has had. That in itself shows Ukrainians are hard to please. But Zelenskiy's way of winning tells a more important truth about them: Ukrainians are loath to accept any kind of authority. That complicates Ukraine's position as perhaps the world’s most important buffer nation, sitting between Fortress Russia and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s European flank. [read more...]

RUSSIA: 159 KNOWN "ANTI-MISSIONARY" PROSECUTIONS IN 2018
by Victoria Arnold: Forum 18 News Service

(6 May) In the calendar year 2018, at least 56 organisations and 103 individuals faced prosecution under the "anti-missionary" changes to the Religion Law and Administrative Code introduced by the July 2016 so-called "Yarovaya laws" of July 2016, Forum 18 has found. In these 159 prosecutions, courts imposed 132 initial convictions, with 129 fines. More than half the regions in Russia saw at least one prosecution.

The changes to the Administrative Code introduced Article 5.26 Part 3 ("Implementation of activities by a religious organisation without indicating its official full name, including the issuing or distribution, within the framework of missionary activity, of literature and printed, audio, and video material without a label bearing this name, or with an incomplete or deliberately false label"), Part 4 ("Russians conducting missionary activity"), and Part 5 ("Foreigners conducting missionary activity").

These figures mark an overall decrease on the number of prosecutions found by Forum 18 in the first year of the anti-missionary amendment's implementation, but an increase in the conviction rate. The year 2016-17 saw 193 prosecutions with 143 convictions. The decline in 2018 appears to be primarily explained by the sharp drop in the number of Administrative Code Article 5.26 cases against Jehovah's Witnesses, whose activities were outlawed as "extremist" by Russia's Supreme Court in 2017. [read more...]

LAY PEOPLE SOUND THE ALARM: CANONICAL STATUS OF ORTHODOX CHURCH OF UKRAINE MUST BE PROTECTED
from: Religious Information Service of Ukraine

(10 May) On May 9, the community of laity and clergy known as Ten Theses for the Orthodox Church of Ukraine published on social media the "Appeal to protect the canonical status of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine!", which expresses concern about the situation among the leadership of the OCU.

"The joy of receipt of the Tomos gave somebody a false impression that it was an end and an indulgence of all sins. But the Tomos was just the beginning of a great path to build a new Orthodox Church in Ukraine, a gift and an advance, which the OCU must implement in life," goes the preface to the Appeal.

It continues - "Instead, the old problems of the Church of Ukraine did not go away, including both the system of governance and more general challenges that the initiative group 'Ten Theses for the Orthodox Church of Ukraine' listed in January this year."

"First of all, we are referring to several interviews of the former patriarch of the UOC-KP, Filaret, and some statements of his associates who do not hide their categorical rejection of both the status of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine recognized by the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the procedure for the formation of its governing bodies," the statement reads.

"From various sources, we are receiving information that His Holiness Filaret intends to gather the hierarchs of the OCU in the near future (he already sent out the corresponding letters of invitation) and to encourage them to make radical changes to the Charter of the OCU and to actually transform the leadership of the OCU into the duomvirate with participation of himself and the Metropolitan of Kyiv and all Ukraine." [read more...]

THE RUSSIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH IS CONCERNED ABOUT BLURRING OF EUROPE'S CULTURAL CODE
from: Interfax-Religion

(6 May) The Russian Orthodox Church is concerned about migration policy of European countries, which results in blurring their traditional culture.

"Cultural transcoding has failed, and it certainly creates a very serious problem. Migration policy should not be illegible - it should take into consideration cultural code of the country’s population, it should not expose this cultural code to the risk," head of the Synodal Department for External Church Relations Metropolitan Hilarion said on the Church and the World program on the TV channel Rossiya-24.

According to him, too liberal migration legislation results in changing demographic balances and in future can lead to "very serious internal conflicts."

He pointed out to the example of immigrants from former colonies in France. "If we speak about the so-called integration of those who came from the countries of 'the third world' into life of the French capital, such integration has failed in the majority of cases," the metropolitan said.

According to him, many people, coming from their countries, live in France as if they in their motherland: they set up a kind of ghetto, whole quarters are inhabited by immigrants from other countries and "when you visit such a quarter, it seems to you that you arrived in Algeria, rather than in Paris, France." [read more...]

FRANCIS SEEKS COMMON GROUND WITH THE BULGARIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH AS HE MAKES A MIGRANT PLEA
from: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

(5 May) Pope Francis sought to build new paths of dialogue Sunday with the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, noting Christianity’s shared history of martyrdom and mission.

At the same time, the pope urged Bulgarians to open their hearts and homes to migrants, arguing that a country like Bulgaria, which is losing so much of its population to emigration, should well understand the forces that drive people to seek better lives elsewhere.

Francis visited Sunday with Patriarch Neofit at the headquarters of the Holy Synod, the Bulgarian church’s governing body, in the capital Sofia. The pope kissed Neofit three times on the cheek and — in a gesture of respect — leaned over to kiss his medallion featuring an image of Christ before praying alone in the Orthodox cathedral.

The conservative Bulgarian church doesn't participate in official Catholic-Orthodox dialogue and even snubbed a pan-Orthodox council in Crete in 2016. The Holy Synod has made clear that it will not take part in any joint services or prayers with the pope, although a children's choir is expected to sing for him.

Francis sought to encourage greater paths of dialogue in his remarks to Neofit, a reflection of the Vatican's longstanding efforts to heal the 1,000-year schism that split Christianity. Francis lamented the "wounds" of division and "fraternal nostalgia" of being unified.

But Neofit held firm in his speech, saying that the Bulgarian Orthodox Church would remain the keepers of true Christianity: "We are firmly convinced that for all that concerns the faith, there cannot and must not be any compromises," he told Francis. [read more...]

HUNGARY'S JESUITS AND ORBAN'S ATTEMPT TO EXPLOIT POPE FRANCIS'S VISIT TO ROMANIA
from: Hungarian Free Press

(6 May) Hungary's Catholic leadership is firmly behind Orban, in fact, church events often serve as political tools to spread Orban's nationalist message in the Carpathian basin. Pope Francis plans to visit Romania and is expected to celebrate an outdoor Mass on June 1, 2019 at the shrine of Our Lady of Csiksomlyo, a pilgrimage site near Sumuleu Ciuc, Romania [formerly Hungarian Transylvania].

This is a historic site of the Seklers (Szekelyek), a mostly Catholic Hungarian speaking minority in Romania. Hungarian government officials regularly attend the annual pilgrimage. Only about 5% of Romania’s population is Catholic and less than half of the Hungarian speaking population follows the Catholic faith, the rest is Reformed, Unitarian and Eastern Orthodox in this region.

The planned outdoor mass may attract 500,000 people; the Pope's speech will be translated to Hungarian. Marc Roscoe Loustau, a Catholic writer whose work appears in the Jesuit magazine America, warns that Hungarian officials might "try to exploit Pope Francis' trip to Romania at the end of May to embolden hostile attitudes toward migrants and refugees."

Indeed, pro-Orban Catholics want to make this event a nationalist showcase. The Jesuit publication is worried that although "many Hungarians go to Csíksomlyo to pray and ask the Virgin Mary for help. But others have political motivations that flagrantly contradict Catholic social teaching." Orban stands against everything that Pope Francis was for when he famously invited a group of Syrian refugees onto his plane to Rome. Hungary's President Janos Ader already announced that he will travel to Csíksomlyo; Orban is tight-lipped about his plans. [read more...]