KIEV, December 21. /TASS/. The Ukrainian parliament’s decision to change the name of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) violates the constitutional rights of its followers, an expert in constitutional law, attorney Vladimir Lysenko, has told TASS.
"The adopted document discriminates the constitutional rights of the citizens of Ukraine, who are followers of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, namely their right for the freedom of religion, enshrined by article 35 of the Ukrainian Constitution," he said, adding that this fact could be a basis for contesting the bill in the Constitutional Court of the country.
At the same time, the Constitution permits restricting those freedoms "in the interests of public order, health or people’s morality." Therefore, the Ukrainian parliament’s move can be justified by those exceptions, with reference to the Ukrainian church’s link to Russia, whom the parliament had earlier designated as an "aggressor country," the expert said.
In this context, Lysenko noted that, according to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church’s charter, it is an administratively independent and "self-governing church whose actions are guided by decrees of the Russian Orthodox Church’s Council."
"To sum it up - this document is in breach of the Ukrainian Constitution, however, if it comes into force and the Constitutional Court of Ukraine fails to establish that it is non-constitutional, then the Ukrainian Orthodox Church will have to obey the law and change its name," he said.
On Thursday, Ukraine’s parliament, Verkhovna Rada, ordered the Ukrainian Orthodox Church to include affiliation to the Russian Orthodox Church in its name. In particular, the document envisions that the church incorporated into a religious organization "centered in the aggressor state" is bound to refer to its affiliation to that foreign religious organization.