Pope condemns Zelensky crackdown on Ukraine’s largest church

Pope Francis has said that he “fears for the freedom of those who pray,” after Ukraine’s  Vladimir Zelensky signed a law effectively banning the country’s largest Orthodox church. The ban has been condemned in Moscow as “satanic.” 

Zelensky signed a law on Saturday banning all religious groups suspected of having ties to Russia and giving the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) nine months to sever all ties with the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC). The law was signed despite the UOC having already declared full autonomy from the Moscow Patriarchate two years ago. Since Russia’s military operation began in 2022, Kiev has used the UOC’s alleged links to Moscow to justify raids on church properties and the arrest of priests.

“I continue to follow with sorrow the fighting in Ukraine and the Russian Federation. And in thinking about the laws recently adopted in Ukraine, I fear for the freedom of those who pray,” Pope Francis said in his weekly prayers on Sunday.

“A person does not commit evil by praying,” the pontiff continued. “So let those who want to pray be allowed to pray in what they consider their Church. Please, let no Christian Church be abolished directly or indirectly. Churches are not to be touched!”

Zelensky described his de-facto ban on the church as “a step towards liberation from Moscow’s devils.” However, UOC spokesman Metropolitan Klyment described the law as an attempt to seize the church’s property for transfer to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU), a non-canonical organization established by the government of Pyotr Poroshenko after Ukraine’s US-backed coup in 2014.

“The Ukrainian Orthodox Church will continue to live as a true church, recognized by the overwhelming majority of practicing Ukrainian believers and local churches around the world,” Klyment said in a statement last week.

The Russian Foreign Ministry condemned the ban as a “powerful blow against the whole of Orthodoxy,” while former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev accused Zelensky of “full-fledged Satanism.” 

Ukraine “will be destroyed, like Sodom and Gomorrah were, and the demons will inevitably fall,” Medvedev said on Friday.

Pope Francis has repeatedly called for peace talks between Kiev and Moscow, and has offered to mediate between both sides. Zelensky rejected this offer last year, and again in March when the pontiff called on Kiev to show “the courage of not leading the country to suicide” and to sit down to talks with the Kremlin.

Last month, Zelensky met with the Vatican’s secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, in Kiev. “I think all of us understand that we have to finish the war, as soon as possible,” he said after the meeting, before adding that Ukraine’s so-called ‘peace formula’ remained the only settlement acceptable to Kiev.

Following that meeting, Parolin said that the formula – which calls on Russia to pay reparations to Ukraine and hand its officials over to face war crimes tribunals – is “not enough,” and that Russia must be included in any negotiations.