Malicious and Miserable

On May 18 over 10 thousand faithful of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church gathered at the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine for a prayerful standing.

They urged MPs not to vote for scandalous bills 4511 and 4128, which could lead to the emergence of large-scale interfaith confrontations and bring down public stability in the country.

Fortunately, common sense won. These initiatives have not been considered. Orthodox believers were able to protect not only their faith and their Church, but also the rights of other faiths in Ukraine, which are also put at the risk of raider attacks in particular.

It is quite obvious that the development of the situation was not in everyone's liking in this way. After all, it is not a secret for anyone that the main benefit of accepting "anti-church" bills should be obtained by one particular denomination – the so-called "UOC-Kyiv Patriarchate".

Its supporters, as well as relevant experts and the media, launched a flurry of information attacks against the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Some of them were based on outspoken fakes.

It is worth recalling at least the two most revealing cases.

The first actively used amateur video, which shows how the priest in the park near the Verkhovna Rada was counting money to a young man who was standing next to a large flat bag. "The meeting of the UOC under the Parliament was paid," "the priests from the Moscow Patriarchate did not hesitate to buy people to stand under the Rada," "for the events of May 18, oligarchs' money was allocated" – that's the incomplete list of charges that sounded from the mouths of our ill-wishers. However, for some reason none of them wanted or hesitated to say that the video without any options shows only one thing: the priest simply paid a young man for the pizza brought.

In the second case, on the air of Radio Liberty, it was reported that in the summer of 2014 in the village of Peski, Ukrainian soldiers were attacked by a sniper. He was killed by return fire. According to the program participant, a priest from a local church turned out to be a sniper.

The carried out check showed that this, so to say, "fact" is not true. Senior priest of the temple of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in the village of Peski, father Andrei Limanets is alive, which means that his "accusation" of "aggression" against the soldiers of the Ukrainian Armed Forces can be safely dispatched into a heap of similar ugly fakes against the UOC, such as "unwillingness to hold burial services for the ATO participants",”storage of weapons in temples ", etc.

I am confident that in the near future we will witness many more "stories" of this kind, whose goal will be to convince the public of the appropriateness and necessity of adopting scandalous bills. In this regard, I would like to remind the initiators of such fakes eloquent words of Monk Ephraim the Syrian: "Malicious and miserable, who will stagnate in all lies, because the devil is always a lie. He who stumbles on lies does not have boldness before the Lord, because he is resented by God and by people."

AiF