{"id":273385,"date":"2023-09-17T07:02:36","date_gmt":"2023-09-17T07:02:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=273385"},"modified":"2023-09-19T06:23:43","modified_gmt":"2023-09-19T06:23:43","slug":"kiev-orders-closure-of-christian-churches","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=273385","title":{"rendered":"Kiev orders closure of Christian churches"},"content":{"rendered":"<h1 style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>Daily Telegraph NZ \u2013 Sept 17, 2023<\/strong><\/h1>\n<p>Kiev Mayor Vitaly Klitschko on Friday ordered the closure of 74 churches belonging to the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC), citing its alleged \u201cdirect ties\u201d to the Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church.<\/p>\n<p>Klitschko\u2019s decree is similar to that used to seize the Kiev Pechersk Lavra, or Monastery of the Caves, which Ukrainian police stormed last month. The world-famous holy site, which is nearly 1,000 years old, was handed over to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, a rival organization set up by the government in 2018.<\/p>\n<p>The Lavra is technically state property but the church administered it under a 2013 agreement, which Kiev declared null and void earlier this year, claiming that the UOC violated it by having ties to \u201cenemy nation\u201d Russia. Ukrainian courts rejected the UOC\u2019s appeals.<\/p>\n<p>The newly sequestered sites may be handed over to the OCU or the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, which is in communion with Rome, or could even be demolished as \u201cillegal objects\u201d given the government\u2019s annulment of lease and use contracts.<\/p>\n<p>Back in March, President Vladimir Zelensky called the seizure of the Lavra \u201ca move to strengthen our spiritual independence\u201d and accused the UOC of being a tool of Russia. A third of Ukraine\u2019s regions have outrightly banned the UOC so far.<\/p>\n<p>Moscow has accused Kiev of persecuting the canonical Orthodox church and Washington for tacitly approving Ukraine\u2019s actions. The US State Department, which produces an annual \u201creligious freedom\u201d report, has never commented on Kiev\u2019s campaign against the UOC. The reports published so far contain references only to meetings with representatives of the government-backed OCU.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/dailytelegraph.co.nz\/world\/kiev-orders-closure-of-christian-churches\/\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ukrainian Orthodox Church property has been seized over its alleged ties to the Russian Orthodox Church<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":273387,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[58,116],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-273385","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-Current_Affairs","category-ukraine"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273385","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=273385"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273385\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":273386,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273385\/revisions\/273386"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/273387"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=273385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=273385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=273385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}