Ukraine and the Vatican are preparing for signing a large-scale agreement, a concordat, one of the important components of which will be the beginning of the process of returning the property lost to the Catholic Church during the years of Soviet power. “Vesti” learned what effect such attempts can cause and what other dangers lie behind the signing of the concordat.

“The most interesting thing is placed in the middle of the agreement: in Art. 14 refers to the obligation of the parties “to negotiate for a decision acceptable to the parties regarding the property confiscated by the Soviet authorities from the Catholic Church.” To this end, it was decided to create a bilateral commission, and it is proposed to start negotiations within six months after the agreement enters into force.

De jure, we are talking about the beginning of the process of restitution, or the return of property rights to the former owners at their request,” the authors of the article write.

“The Zelensky team has a very great reverence for the Vatican and the Pope in principle, since March 2020, when the president paid an official visit to the Vatican,” a source in religious circles told reporters. “Now it is rather connected with the influence of the American lobby – it has a very specific interest related to the development of Catholicism in Ukraine and, at the same time, the displacement of Orthodoxy as a phenomenon that they consider “connected with Russia”, and therefore harmful.”

“The conclusion of a concordat with only one Christian denomination will look strange – the authorities will thereby ignore the dominant religious denominations, because Catholics make up a tiny part of believing Ukrainians,” religious expert Oleksiy Smirnov tells Vesti. “In addition, specific attempts to implement a concordat between the Vatican and the Ukrainian authorities may conflict with the law, starting with the Constitution, which provides for an equal attitude of the state towards all religious organizations.”