By Kostas Onisenko
The European Court of Human Rights has accepted to examine a complaint submitted by the head of the so-called “Kyiv Patriarchate,” Filaret (Denisenko), regarding the closure of this institution.
In particular, after the Unification Council in December 2018, the so-called “Kyiv Patriarchate” ceased to operate since it merged with the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, which had just been established after the granting of the Autocephaly Tomos by the Ecumenical Patriarch.
Despite the fact that the cessation of the “Kyiv Patriarchate” was decided by Filaret, he later tried to reverse this decision. In May 2019, the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine announced that the “Kyiv Patriarchate” has been officially abolished.
On November 8, 2020, the legal department of the former “Kyiv Patriarchate” filed a complaint against the Ukrainian authorities regarding the abolition of “Kyiv Patriarchate” in the European Court of Human Rights.
On February 9 this year, the Court sent a letter to the legal representative of the “Kyiv Patriarchate” informing that it agreed to examine the complaint. Yesterday, the legal representative of Filaret, Neonila Tkachenko, published the letter of the Court with a Facebook post.
In this post, Tkachenko criticized with dismissive remarks the former Ukrainian President, Petro Poroshenko, and other people and described the dissolution of the so-called “Kyiv Patriarchate” as a “seizure.”
