In UkraineA senior cleric from a church allegedly linked to Moscow was sentenced to house arrest on Saturday after a hearing investigating whether he glorified invading Russian forces and stoked religious divisions, the church reported.
kyiv is cracking down on the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (IOU) alleging that it is pro-Russian and collaborates with Moscow, a charge the Church denies.
In a statement, the IOU claims that a kyiv court has also ordered Metropolitan Pavlo to wear an electronic bracelet. The Interfax Ukraine and Ukrinform news agencies said Pavlo had been sentenced to 60 days of house arrest.
“I have not done anything. I think it is a political order,” Pavlo told the press after the sentence was announced.
Prosecutors stated that the house arrest and electronic bracelet were precautionary measures and that the case against Pavlo would continue.
The Tass news agency said the court ordered Pavlo to live in a town about 40 kilometers southeast of kyiv. Pavlo said that the house was not habitable.
“There is nothing to sleep in, no heating or light. There is no kitchen or spoon. But it’s okay, I’ll bear everything,” he said. Pavlo has been living in accommodation at kyiv’s Monastery of the Caves, a 980-year-old monastery complex that the government says the church must abandon.
According to Tass, the court has denied Pavlo permission to attend religious services.
Pavlo appeared in court after being questioned by the Ukrainian Security Service, which presented a series of charges against the cleric.
Since the beginning of 2022, criminal cases have been opened against 61 IOU clerics, seven of whom have been found guilty.
Pavlo, a senior IOU official, is abbot of the kyiv Monastery of the Caves. The Church has so far refused to leave.
The UOC has been accused of maintaining ties with the pro-invasion Russian Orthodox Church, which used to be its parent church but with which the UOC says it broke ties in May 2022.
The UOC is the second largest church in Ukraine, although most Ukrainian Orthodox believers belong to a separate branch of the faith formed four years ago by the union of branches independent of the Moscow authority.
Moscow claimed last month that kyiv was “illegally attacking” the IOU, adding that this confirmed the need for its military operations in Ukraine.
Source: Ambito
