Ministry of Culture withholds statistics on UOC, – Bishop Clement (VIDEO)

At the press conference on the theme "Anti-religious bills: challenges for Ukrainian society" held on May 16 in UNIAN, Bishop Clement (Vecheria), head of the Synodal Information and Education Department of the UOC, drew the attention of those present to the discrimination of the Church by the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine.

"This is an outrageous fact and direct discrimination by the state body against believers of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church," said Bishop Clement. "Today, the Department for Religious Affairs is trying to exert pressure on local governments and those who must address church issues at the local level. And representatives of the regional bodies for religious affairs are called to the Ministry of Culture on the carpet for clarifying which statutes must be registered and which ones must not, how to manipulate religious statistics in Ukraine. A simple example: every year the Department for Religious Affairs reported to the public about the religious situation in the country: how many parishes, monasteries, dioceses, etc. we have. Only in the last two years, when the department has been headed by Andrei Yurash, an absolutely odious personality, we do not have any official statistics at all. Maybe the Department does not keep it at all? Maybe it does nothing, except fighting against the UOC? Because its main function – the registration of religious organizations – it does not perform. At least, the Department does not report how exactly it performs it."