RUSSIA CHURCHES PROTEST GOVT DEMAND FOR FAITHFULS’ DETAILS
Web posted at: 12/16/2006 8:28:37
Source ::: REUTERS

Moscow • Church leaders in Russia have protested to the government over a law that has revived memories of Soviet persecution by requiring them to supply the names of their worshippers and the contents of weekly sermons.

Religious heads said they asked a top Kremlin official this week for exemption from a new measure obliging them to provide the information to a special state agency by April 2007.

“This is impossible for us,” Thaddaeus Kondrusiewicz, the Catholic archbishop in Moscow, said in an interview late on Thursday. “We have 27 masses every Sunday in Moscow alone - how can I know how many people took part and what their names were?”

The powerful Russian Orthodox church, the biggest denomination which has enjoyed strong personal support from President Vladimir Putin, said the new reporting requirements raised the spectre of past persecution. “We should not return to the malpractice of the Soviet era when every step of a religious organisation was controlled by the government, the text of the sermon was verified and the state kept an eye on every religious document,” Moscow Patriarchate legal expert Ksenia Chernega told Interfax news agency.

Concern began when government officials notified religious leaders that a new law originally designed to clamp down on non-governmental organisations would apply to them too.

Signed this year by Putin, it demands that organisations register with a special state agency and supply full details of membership, sources of finance and a record of all meetings.

The NGO law has already provoked international protests, with opponents saying Russia wanted to strangle the sort of “people power” that toppled authoritarian governments in the former Soviet republics of Ukraine and Georgia.

“It would be rather strange to count praying people in every parish or monastery and precisely register every donation, which is suggested by an amendment to the Law on Non-Profit Organisations,” Moscow Patriarchate spokesman Vsevolod Chaplin said.

Galina Fokina, acting head of the Federal Registration Service department responsible for religious organisations, said she was examining the complaints.