Metropolitan of Nizhyn and Pryluky Kliment, a permanent member of the Holy Synod of the UOC, head of the Synodal Information and Education Department of the UOC, commented on the decision of the Kyiv Regional Council to ban the activities of the UOC.

“It is very significant that one of the first decisions of the regional council after the re-election of its leadership was the traditional for members of the party, created by the odious oligarch Poroshenko, PR on the topic of religion. Perhaps we will someday live to see the time when deputies get tired of making legally insignificant statements about churches and will move on to their immediate duties, for the sake of which, in fact, they are paid salaries from the budget of taxpayers. Perhaps someday this regional council will have the courage to declare a total ban on the territory of the region of drug addiction, drunkenness, human trafficking, bribery and extortion, which are a real threat to state security, which the heads of leading European organizations have repeatedly told Ukrainians about,” the bishop said.

According to him, so far we are observing only a sad fact – decommunization has affected only monuments and street signs. It did not at all touch the consciousness of the people’s representatives, who stubbornly think in terms of the paradigms of the Soviet Union with its totalitarian bans on religion.

“Therefore, the result will be the same as in the USSR – it is impossible to ban the church. Bans make the church even more perfect in its earthly dimension, everything morally best crystallizes in it,” the hierarch is convinced.

He emphasized that “Jesus Christ did not curse his enemies, but prayed for their forgiveness. The response of Christians to the decision of the regional council should be the same – we need to pray for those deputies so that God forgives them for their statements, because, as it is said in the Gospel, they “They don’t know what they’re doing.”