Paul
Goble
Staunton, October 31 – President Vladimir
Putin this week signed a new law, pushed by the Moscow Patriarchate, that will
provide government funding at the regional level for religious organizations in
the name of the preservation of those of their buildings which have been or
will be designated as “objects of cultural heritage.”
Because money is fungible, such
government funds will in fact provide support for the operations of religious groups
in general and the Russian Orthodox Church in particular in violation of the
provisions of the 1993 Russian Constitution and to the detriment of religious
groups which do not have “cultural heritage objects” in their inventories.
In reporting on this development in
yesterday’s “Kommersant,” Pavel Korobov says that the new law will allow the
regions and municipalities the basis for adopting legislation that will allow
government money to go to those religious organizations which can show that
they are in possession of such objects and need help to preserve them (kommersant.ru/doc/2601671).
. Not surprisingly, the greatest beneficiary of this will
be the Moscow Patriarchate whose leaders have been pushing for such legislation
for a long time, according to Abbess Kseniya, the head of the Patriarchate’s
legal service. She noted that it will have another consequence: it will speed
up the return of churches seized by the authorities in Soviet times to the church.
Roman
Lunkin, the president of the Russian Experts Guild on Religion and Law, agrees.
Churches have been reluctant to press their claims for such properties in many
instances because they lack the funds to restore churches. Now, under the terms
of the law Putin has signed, they will be able to get tax money to do so.
Putin
has been active in promoting this process. In January 2010, he met with
Patriarch Kirill and decalred that it was necessary to “accelerate the process
of the transfer by the state of church property and to give this process a
legal framework.” The current law is one
of the consequences of that declaration.
The
leaders of other confessions, including Rushan Abbyasov, the deputy head of the
Council of Muftis of Russia (SMR), and Zinovy Kogan, the vice president of the
Congress of Jewish Religious Unions and Organizations, said they would make use
of this new possibility as well. But it is clear that the Orthodox Church is
the primary beneficiary.
But
it is possible that this measure may have less impact than its supporters hope.
As Abbess Kseniya acknowledges, the law allows regions to help the church in
this way, but it doesn’t require them to do so. And because many regions
themselves are in economic trouble, they may not be willing or able to come up
with the money to fund such initiatives.
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