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German human rights activists call on Pope to protect Orthodoxy in Ukraine

"We implore you to use your status and the authority of the Roman Catholic Church to protect your brothers in Christ. Do prevent them from becoming martyrs," the letter reads

MOSCOW, April 13. /TASS/. The Association for the Prevention of Discrimination and Exclusion of Russian Germans and Russian-speaking Citizens in Germany (VADAR) has sent an open letter to Pope Francis with a request to urge Ukraine to stop the persecution of Orthodox believers.

"Right now, our Orthodox brothers in Ukraine are experiencing one of the most dramatic moments ever. They are being persecuted, imprisoned, killed, and deprived of an opportunity to pray, and their shrines are being desecrated. The abbot of the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra is forced to wear an electronic bracelet on his ankle as if he were a criminal. This is precisely how the worst times of last century began in our country, culminating in the Holocaust," reads a news release obtained by TASS on Thursday.

"We implore you to use your status and the authority of the Roman Catholic Church to protect your brothers in Christ. Do prevent them from becoming martyrs," the letter reads.

In Ukraine, tensions over the UOC soar every day. Supporters of the schismatic Orthodox Church of Ukraine have been seizing buildings of the canonical Church. Local authorities are depriving the UOC of the right to lease land its buildings stand on. Such decisions were made last week by authorities in Khmelnitsky, Lutsk, and Kamenets-Podolsky. In Ivano-Frankovsk, schismatics seized all UOC churches. The canonical Church has lost all church buildings in Lvov. On April 10, the Rovno regional authorities banned the UOC in the region.

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