Bulgarian Patriarch asks President of Ukraine Poroshenko to protect Ukrainian Orthodox believers from persecutions
December 16, 2015. Patriarch Neophyte of Bulgaria expressed his concerns with violations of Orthodox believers’ rights in Ukraine, as the website Interfax-religion reports.
The Patriarch addressed to the Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko and said that he is concern about the numerous registered facts of violating rights of the believers belonging to the only canonical Church in Ukraine. He underlined the issue of the seizures of the UOC churches by force.
The Bulgarian Church’s primate stressed the attempts to take the Pochayev Lavra and the Kiev Lavra of the Caves from the canonical Church and to give them to the self-proclaimed Kiev Patriarchate.
“Realization of such scenario will not only destabilize the social situation in Ukraine, but also will make it impossible for Orthodox hierarchs, clerics and believers from other countries to visit the mentioned Lavras as we do not have Eucharist and prayerful communication with schismatic structures,” the letter reads.
Patriarch Neophyte asks Poroshenko to take all necessary measures to protect rights of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, securing its churches from being captured, and other forms of forceful, information and other pressure.