By Kostas Onisenko
Some media outlets have reported that Svetlana Tichanovskaya, the leader of Belarus’ opposition, has said she will address the Ecumenical Patriarch to request a Tomos of Autocephaly for the Church of Belarus.
“This is a lie,” Tikhanovskaya’s spokeswoman Anna Krasulina told OrthodoxTimes. According to Krasulina, such a thing did not happen and could not happen as the intervention in matters of the Church and dogmas is completely contrary to what Tichanovska stands for the democratic movement of Belarusians fighting against the Lukashenko regime.
“Tikhanovskaya, as the leader of the Belarussian Democratic Movement, sees freedom of religion and expression regardless of dogmas. Churches, in this context, are important partners of civil society, in which the right to participate in public proceedings must be guaranteed, based on their teachings and beliefs,” Krasoulina said.
“Our principles, on the one hand, advocate the independence of the Church from the state and on the other hand even theoretically exclude any influence of the state in the Orthodox Church or any other doctrine,” Krasulina said, adding that Lukashenko and his regime are the ones trying to sow discord and division among the people of Belarus using such tools.
“Our common goal has nothing to do with which doctrine or Church a believer follows, but the guarantee of his right to do so. In other words, the job of the state is not to interfere with the personal issues of the citizens but to ensure the right of everyone to choose”, pointed out to OrthodoxTimes the spokesperson of Tichanovskaya, Anna Krasulina.
