UKRAINE: ODESA CATHOLICS CONTEMPLATING HUNGER

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 KIEV 000578

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 02/13/2016
TAGS: PHUM
SUBJECT: UKRAINE: ODESA CATHOLICS CONTEMPLATING HUNGER
STRIKE


Classified By: Ambassador for reasons 1.4 (b) and (d).

Summary
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1. (C) The Roman Catholic Bishop of the Odesa-Simferopol
diocese, Bronislav Bernatsky, told us February 8 that
"hundreds" of his parishioners will begin a hunger strike
March 1 to protest what he described as "the strangulation of
the Catholic Church" by the Odesa city government. The
bishop claimed that Roman Catholics in his diocese were
outraged by the city's refusal to restitute badly-needed
Church property, including the diocese seminary building,
which was being rented out by a government ministry for
profit. Bernatsky characterized the Odesa city and oblast
governments as corrupt, Soviet-style bureaucracies run by
openly pro-Russia "communist criminals." This alleged
pro-Russia bias meant, according to Bernatsky, that the local
leader of the predominant Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Moscow
Patriarchate (UOC-MP) had the final say on matters pertaining
to religion. Bernatsky alleged that UOC-MP Metropolitan
Angafangel recently "advised" the Odesa city council to turn
down a request by Catholic charity Caritas to purchase a
building to use as a home for 100 street children. End
summary.

Hunger Strike in March?
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2. (SBU) During a February 8 meeting in his cramped quarters
at Odesa's Assumption Cathedral, the Roman Catholic Bishop of
the Odesa-Simferopol diocese, Bronislav Bernatsky, told us
that "hundreds" of his approximately 16,000 parishioners
would begin a hunger strike March 1 to protest what he called
"the strangulation of the Catholic Church" by the Odesa city
government. Angered by official footdragging on the
restitution of Roman Catholic communal property in Odesa, and
tired of being ignored by Odesa mayor Eduard Hurvits, the
bishop said his faithful had no choice but to do something
extreme. A one-day "warning shot" hunger strike on January
25 had gotten the mayor's attention, but produced only "more
empty words" and no action from the government.

Seminary Is the Focus
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3. (SBU) Bishop Bernatsky stressed to us that, while the
Roman Catholic Church had claim to many communal property
sites in the city, what the diocese needed most was the
return of its seminary. Pointing to the building from the
window of his quarters, Bernatsky explained that the seminary
had been seized in the Soviet era and turned into a training
school run by the Ministry of Transport and Communications.
After Ukrainian independence (1991),the downsized school
began renting out half of the building, allegedly passing a
significant cut of the rent to the mayor's office -- an
arrangement that continued to this day, Bernatsky asserted.
Bernatsky complained that he had, during his four years as
bishop, been criticized repeatedly by municipal officials,
including Hurvits (who assumed office in 2005),for having
"too many foreign priests" in the diocese. Bernatsky said he
had consistently responded by noting that if he could get the
seminary back, he could recruit and train more priests
locally -- instead of having to rely on clergy from Poland or
other cities in Ukraine.

A Soviet City
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4. (C) Bernatsky blasted both the Odesa city and oblast
governments, characterizing them as deeply corrupt,
Soviet-style bureaucracies run by "Soviet-era communist
criminals." Moreover, the bishop complained, the governments
were openly pro-Russian and anti-Ukrainian. The same was
true of the local media, which had a clear pro-Moscow tilt;
"everything in Odesa," the bishop said, "favors Russia."
This pro-Russia bias, Bernatsky claimed, meant that
Metropolitan Angafangel, the local leader of the Ukrainian
Orthodox Church-Moscow Patriarchate (UOC-MP, the local name
for the Russian Orthodox Church),had the final say on
matters pertaining to religion.

"Better Homeless, Hungry and Orthodox than Catholic"
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5. (SBU) Bishop Bernatsky asked the director of
Caritas-Odesa, Father Mykola Hutsal, to provide a specific,
recent example of how the UOC-MP, and Metropolitan Angafangel
in particular, influenced local politics. Hutsal related
that Caritas had for the past year provided ad hoc food and
shelter to approximately 100 street children. With funding
from an Austria-based Catholic charity, Caritas had
petitioned the Odesa city government to purchase and renovate
a building to provide a home for the street kids; the sale
was put to a vote in the city council and turned down. When
Bernatsky and Hutsal inquired about why the sale was vetoed,
the city council chairman told them the proposal was shot
down "because you'll turn all the kids into Catholics." The
chairman allegedly added that the guidance from Metropolitan
Angafangel had been clear: better that the street kids were
"homeless, hungry and Orthodox than Catholic."

Situation "Worse than under Kuchma"
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6. (C) In closing, as Bernatsky showed us the
privately-funded renovation work under way at Assumption
Cathedral, he said that, at least for Roman Catholics in
Odesa, things had gotten worse in the last year. This was
"ironic," Bernatsky said, given that Odesa's Catholic
community had at some risk publicly prayed for free and fair
presidential elections in 2004 and supported the Orange
Revolution. Bernatsky, who entered the priesthood in 1972
and attended seminary in Riga, acknowledged that Ukraine had
made a lot of progress since the Soviet era, "when we were
beaten, exiled and shot." He said that then-President Leonid
Kuchma had done a decent job of addressing the concerns of
Ukraine's Catholics, even if largely out of fear of being
criticized by the Vatican and Western countries. President
Yushchenko, by contrast, felt he had been given a free pass
by the West; thus, in Bernatsky's view, the Orange president
paid lip service to religious freedom, but took no action to
actually advance it.

Out To Lunch
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7. (SBU) We had hoped to meet with the head of the Odesa
Oblast Department of Religious Issues, but were thwarted in
genuine Soviet style. The department chief had agreed to
meet with us during our visit, and even set a time. However,
as the time for the meeting drew near, he called us to
express his growing anxiety about "meeting with foreigners."
When we arrived for the meeting, the man's secretary simply
informed us that he had "disappeared."

Comment
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8. (C) Bishop Bernatsky's assertion that Yushchenko has done
nothing to advance religious freedom is wide of the mark;
it's a characterization not shared by any other major
religious leader that we know of. That said, the bishop's
frustration about the glacial pace of communal property
registration is widely shared and is a concern common to all
of Ukraine's major Christian denominations as well as the
country's sizeable Jewish and Muslim (primarily Crimean
Tatar) communities. Leaders from across Ukraine's religious
spectrum have repeatedly told us that they don't doubt
Yushchenko's sincerity on the issue; what frustrates them is
the continued lack of results.


9. (C) What is happening to Roman Catholics in Odesa may be
an unintended consequence of President Yushchenko's
well-meaning April 2005 decision to abolish the State
Committee on Religious Affairs (SCRA) and lessen the
government's role in religion. The SCRA, while deeply
flawed, did help protect the interests of minority religious
groups and help resolve some property restitution cases.
Yushchenko's scrapping of the SCRA has, in effect, left
minority religious groups more susceptible to the influences
of the dominant local religious organization; in some areas
this means the UOC-MP. We should note, however, that in
western Ukraine's Lviv Oblast, where Catholics dominate the
city council, the UOC-MP is facing difficulties similar to
those described by Bishop Bernatsky.
HERBST