MOSCOW, February 14. /TASS/. Pope Francis considers the religious persecution of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) in Ukraine to be unacceptable and calls for an end to religious discrimination, Russian Ambassador to the Vatican Ivan Soltanovsky told TASS in an interview.

"The embassy regularly informs the Vatican at all levels about the persecution of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church. The situation with the persecution of people on the basis of religion is of concern to our Vatican interlocutors. The Holy See and the Pope personally publicly call for an end to religious discrimination and defend religious freedom," he said when asked how the Pope responds to Moscow's calls to condemn Kiev for its actions against the UOC.

"This also applies to Ukraine: In March 2023, Pope Francis spoke in defense of the clergymen of the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra. Of course, we would like the authoritative voice of the Vatican to sound louder with regard to the blatant violations of religious freedoms of Ukrainian Orthodox believers by the Kiev authorities and the schismatic, so-called ‘church’ (Orthodox Church of Ukraine - TASS)," the diplomat added.

Ukraine is conducting an active campaign against the canonical UOC, including encouraging the transition of its religious communities to the jurisdiction of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, which was created in 2018 from the merger of two schismatic religious structures. Local authorities are stripping the UOC of the right to lease land for siting church buildings; with their support, supporters of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine are forcibly seizing the churches of the canonical church and attacking its clergymen. As of November 4, 2023, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) had initiated criminal proceedings against 70 UOC-affiliated clergymen since February 2022. Sixteen UOC metropolitans and 19 hierarchs were stripped of Ukrainian citizenship. On October 19, the Verkhovna Rada (Ukrainian parliament) passed in the first reading a bill, drafted by the government on the instructions of President Vladimir Zelensky, aimed at banning the UOC outright. Nevertheless, according to the State Service of Ukraine for Ethno-Politics and Freedom of Conscience, at least five to six million people in the country remain UOC parishioners.