U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT STATES SUPPORT FOR AUTOCEPHALY OF ORTHODOX CHURCH IN UKRAINE
Interfax-Religiia, 25 September 2018
The U.S.A. considers Ecumenical Patriarch
Bartholomew to be
a voice of toleration and dialogue, and it supports the proponents
of Ukrainian
autocephaly, an official representative of the State Department, Heather Nauert, declared.
"The
United States respects the possibility of Orthodox religious
leaders and
believers of Ukraine to pursue the path of autocephaly in
accordance with their
convictions. We respect the ecumenical patriarch as a voice of
religious
toleration and interconfessional dialogue," Heather Nauert's
statement
says, which was published Tuesday on the State Department
website.
The
U.S.A.
supports Ukraine, which, as H. Nauert expressed, "designs its
own path and
makes its own decisions and associations, free from external
interference."
The
representative of the State Department stated at the same time
that the U.S.A.
"decisively supports freedom of religious confession,
including freedom of
members of groups to manage their own religion in accordance
with their
convictions and freely to profess their own faith without the
interference of
the government."
Meanwhile, it was President Petro Poroshenko who raised the question of the receipt of a tomos concerning the creation of "a united local church" in Ukraine, which was regarded by the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and the Moscow patriarchate as a whole and by other Orthodox churches as a crude intrusion of the state into church affairs. (tr. by PDS, posted 25 September 2018)
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