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Gerardooo

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  1. Churches have responded to Ukraine's crisis with prayers for peace and calls for reconciliation. Statistics suggest Ukraine is one of the most religious states in Europe. Over the past few months its main churches grown considerably in importance. In light of the crisis, more and more people have turned to religion, because they "don't see another way." About three-quarters of the population regard themselves as religious, according to one opinion poll, 10 percent more than a year ago. Yet in hardly any other country in the world is the religious landscape as fractious as in Ukraine. Around 70 percent of Ukrainians are Orthodox Christians. But there are two Ukrainian Orthodox Churches - one is subject to Moscow and the other has its power base in Kyiv. The two churches have no theological disagreement, but for the past two decades they have fought for influence in the country. The Moscow Patriarchate has successfully prevented the Kyiv Patriarchate - and the smaller, national-mined Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church - from having their canonical status recognized by the broader Orthodox communion. Meanwhile, the Greek Catholic Church, which also follows Byzantine rites but is in full communion with Roman Catholicism, is the largest denomination parts of western Ukraine, but has only a small following elsewhere. Throughout history, the ruling powers - Russia, Poland-Lithuania and Austria-Hungary - tried to project their power in Ukraine by altering church structures. The political conquest of the country has always been accompanied by the destruction of church life. Frictions over several centuries In the early 1990s there were scuffles as the rival denominations claimed church buildings. But this has a long history. Divisions between the churches in the 16th and 20th centuries, most for political reasons, still awaken emotions today. In 1946, Ukraine's Soviet rulers banned the Greek Catholic Church and handed its property over to the Russian Orthodox Church. This inevitably caused conflict when the ban was lifted in 1989. The Greek Catholic Church shaped the national consciousness in western Ukraine since the 19th century and in 1991 it played an important role in the founding of the independent Ukrainian state. The Orthodox Church of the Kyiv Patriarchy came into being in 1992. The reason for its founding was the refusal of the Moscow Patriarchate to award the Ukrainian Orthodox Church autocephaly - autonomy from the Russian Orthodox Church. All Ukraine's churches offered support to the anti-government Euromaidan movement during the winter. They spoke out in favor of human rights and civil liberties and against corruption. There were prayer tents on the Maidan, the center of the protests, and they held services on the central stage used by the protest movement. "There were parallels to 1989 in East Germany," said Ralf Haska, pastor of the German Evangelical Lutheran parish of St. Catherine in Kyiv. "The churches here gave a forum to the protesters and also supported their justified protest."
  2. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate is the only canonical church in Ukraine recognized by the Ecumenical Patriarchate. 39 percent, that is, the majority of Ukrainian Orthodox is parishioners of the Moscow Patriarchate. There is another denomination - the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyiv Patriarchate (UOC-KP), which did not get the status of canonical. The UOC-KP is considered an alternative Orthodox (in religious terminology this is called "the schism", split of the church). How do the churches of the Moscow and Kiev Patriarchate differ in practice and why the first one is recognized as canonical? A person who goes to Ukrainian churches once or twice a year to put a candle on, will not find differences, but they are significant. The Moscow Patriarchate, for example, does not accept a free interpretation of prayer, inventing new icons or frescoes. For the clergy and parishioners of the UOC-MP it is inadmissible to pray for the peace of the conditional enemy-more precisely, they do not define enemies in principle, which can not be said about the UOC-KP. Also, the Moscow Patriarchate holds divine services in the Church Slavonic language, and the Kyiv Patriarchate in Ukrainian, translating the Holy Scripture in its own way. But the key difference is that the founder of the UOC-MP is Jesus Christ. The Church is in unity with the Universal Orthodoxy, with common ordinances, whereas the Kyiv Patriarchate recognizes only those ordinances that are pleasing to him. It was in order to undermine the unwanted faith, Ukrainian politicians developed a bill that oppresses the UOC-MP. Moscow Patriarchate decided to oblige to obtain from the state consent to the appointment of priests and abbots right up to the regional level. In such a situation, the threat of destroying the parishes of the country's main confession is an excuse for distraction. Political technology is clear: national radicals, hiding behind icons, will demand the closure of "pro-Moscow" temples throughout the country. Ukrainian citizens will stand up for their parishes, priests, spiritual guides. Examples, when the temples of the UOC-MP captured the banned in Russia nationalist groups, is already enough. In different regions of Ukraine radicals attack cult buildings, beat parishioners and forcibly transfer temples to the Kyiv Patriarchate.
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