Andrey Yurash – a course towards religious war?

Another civil service representative of Ukraine who belongs to the “new generation” proves his incompetence.

A representative of the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine still chaired by Kirilenko, a “notorious religious scholar” Andrey Yurash who has held the office of director of the Department for Religions and Nationalities since November 2014, was recently involved in manipulations with the court documents. On 3 February 2016, at the session of the Public Council affiliated to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine (MFA) Yurash, using his authority of the high level functionary of the Ministry of Culture, was trying to convince the attendees that in the inter-denominational conflict of the UOC and UOC-KP communities in Ptycha village, Rivne region, the truth is on the Kyiv Patriarchate’s side. Upon that, he demonstrated everybody the court decisions regarding the conflict having been allegedly approved in favor of the UOC KP.

This incident was reported by the session’s participant – deputy chairperson of the Department of the UOC External Church Relations protopriest Nikolay Danilevich: “I was really astonished when I saw these were copies of the court decisions in vlg. Ptycha dated 2 September 2015, whereby the lawsuit filed by the religious community of the UOC KP Holy Dormition church in Ptycha village against the religious community of the UOC Holy Dormition church of the same village was dismissed. Responding to the situation, I refuted the words of A.V. Yurash, having pointed to evident facts and cited extracts of these documents”. Subsequently, Yurash made awkward attempts in a “I-was-mistaken” manner, though, except himself, he could hardly convince anybody. 

The case itself with forged documents at the official MFA meeting seems quite consistent and even routine in view of the recent statements and activity of the current director of the Department for Religions and Nationalities.

Episodes with Mr. Yurash’s words running counter to the objective reality, are fairly numerous; as a rule, they have to do with evaluation and activity of the biggest Orthodox denomination in Ukraine – the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

Yurash himself used to make the following official statement: “We are guided by the peremptory universal maxim: all religious organizations are equal before the state and the attitude towards them is absolutely the same”. Yet is the attitude of Mr. Yurash and that of the Department for Religions led by him is truly equal to all religious organizations? The statements voiced by him give serious reasons to cast doubt on this thesis, first and foremost, when it comes to the ongoing clash between the two biggest Orthodox Churches in Ukraine – the UOC and the UOC KP.

There is a weird utterance made by Mr. Yurash as a civil servant, who is supposed to declare his impartiality towards religious organizations, in which he publicly called representatives of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church as the FSB agents and blamed them for their unwillingness to seek middle ground with the church raiders.

Not less eccentric is a statement of Andrey Yurash wherein he, giving his comments on the UOC status, ventured to say officially: “The UOC (MP) does not have any autonomous status. Only a person who has never read Statutes of the UOC (MP), ROC, can promote this thesis. The word “autonomous” is not used in the Statute at all”.

Nevertheless, having entered an official site of the Department of External Church Relations of the Russian Orthodox Church, we find out in paragraph 18 the following provision, unexpected for the “famous scholar in religious studies”:

“The Ukrainian Orthodox Church is self-governed and enjoys the rights of wide autonomy”.

As we can see, the word “autonomy” is available in the official documents; moreover, it’s not just a single word but used with an attribute WIDE!

In an attempt to justify numerous incidents related to illegal seizures of the UOC churches by the UOC KP members in Western Ukraine, Yurash asserts that in Donbass territories, which are not controlled by the Ukrainian government, the UOC KP activity is purportedly prohibited altogether: “On the occupied territories religious organizations act beyond any legal field, … there is total arbitrariness. Activity of part of religious structures is suspended, separatists’ leaders state they are affiliated only to one confession, the rest being forced to collaborate or close down. The UOC KP activity has been stopped”.

Nevertheless, UOC-KP archbishop of Donetsk and Mariupol Sergiy who has presumably no idea about the statements of Andrey Yurash, has said in the recent interview: «Regarding the occupied territories, we have monasteries, churches, charity organizations there… We are not discriminated there because priests are not involved in politics, they just pray for the peace arrival”.

A lot of people were perplexed by the statements made by Mr. Yurash in September 2015 which can hardly be called otherwise than separatist. Hereby Andrey Yurash urged the UOC administration to transfer its four diocesan centers from the territories in eastern Ukraine being out of the jurisdiction of the Ukrainian authorities: “We used to communicate in an informal way, however, at the moment we are preparing real addresses to the hierarchy of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church so that it would make one highly significant gesture to prove the Church understands the society”.    

Actually, by making this statement the functionary of the Ministry of Culture “de facto” refused to recognize the occupied Donbass land as a part of the Ukrainian state. Needless to say, the UOC hierarchy that has repeatedly underscored their position to comply solely with the laws of Ukraine whatever activity they may undertake rejected such offer point-blank!

Earlier though Mr. Yurash also felt free to express separatist ideas (in a church context). Making judgments about hypothetical possibilities of creating a Local Church in Ukraine (UOC KP-based for sure), Andrey Yurash noted in passing: “I do not perceive it as a particular tragedy that… tens or even a hundred of parishes in Bukovyna and Bessarabia will accede to the Romanian Patriarchate”.       

But this is not the limit: Mr. Yurash is capable of surprising even more! Well known are his statements concerning church canons which can embarrass anybody who is in the least familiar with the church subject matter: “Basically, my attitude to canons is quite indifferent, not to say, critical. Canons are not forms established by God, they were established by the Fathers of the Church, Councils, determined via resolutions of the church meetings, i.e. mortal people, therefore they may be as well cancelled as they were once introduced. This is not something not to be subject to modifications”.   

It is worth reminding that church canons mean the same to the Orthodox Church as the Constitution does to the state. Yet, unlike some young states where nearly every new President during his term of office deemed it to be his duty to make “valuable” amendments to the Constitution, most canons of the Orthodox Church (they are single for the World Orthodoxy) were adopted more than 1500 years ago and have remained unchanged since then. As for the personality of Andrey Yurash, he can hardly be called suitable for the role of the church constitution reformer.  

Holding the post of the director of the Department for Religions and Nationalities of the Ministry of Culture since November 2014, Andrey V. Yurash is an official representative of the state vis-à-vis Ukrainian religious organizations, particularly, Orthodox churches. Over the period of his “smart management” there have been plenty of inter-denominational clashes (most notably in villages Katerynivka and Ptycha), having significantly damaged the reputation of Ukraine as a rule-of-law country in the eyes of the European and world community. Conflicts around unlawful endeavors to get the UOC churches under jurisdiction of the UOC KP in western Ukraine evoked such a powerful public response that crossed over our country’s borders long ago. This issue has become a matter of particular interest to the OSCE, it is commented on by Patriarchs of Local Churches, it was one of the agenda points at the Synaxis of Orthodox Church Primates in Chambesy.

Work quality of any high rank public official is appraised by the results of his performance. If a European politician or a civil servant is incriminated in fake statements or unprofessional deeds – he or she must resign. If a person in authority causes harm to the society rather than benefit – he or she is dismissed.   

If public transport works poorly – it’s clear to everybody that the Minister of Transport is at fault; if medicine gets worse – the responsibility is to be assumed by the Minister of Healthcare. Thus, what should happen so that it could dawn on everybody that running the Department for Religions and Nationalities is not the right job for the current Department’s director? Should there begin a religious war? 

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