Religion in Ukraine

Ukraine is a predominantly Christian country. For years between five churches, the Orthodox and the Latin rite, a violent, emotionally and politically embossed dispute over legitimacy and real estate. Islam provides a strong regional minority.

• Ukrainian Orthodox ( Moscow Patr )
• Ukrainian Orthodox ( Kiev Patr )
• Ukrainian Orthodox ( Autocephalous )
• Ukrainian ( Greek ) Catholic
• Roman Catholic
• Protestant / Evangelical
• Jewish
• Islamic
• Buddhistic
• Other
• Without specifying
• Source: Razumkov center, 2006

Christianity

The Ukrainian Orthodox Church is the most historically important Eastern Orthodox Church in Ukraine. In order to take the claim that name currently arguing three churches. As unequivocally canonical currently only the Patriarchate of Moscow is in the eyes of the other Orthodox Churches under -standing Ukrainian Orthodox Church Moscow Patriarchate.

Ever since the liberation or conquest of Ukraine by the Russian Empire belonged to the Orthodox believers in Ukraine of the Russian Orthodox Church. Previously had the Ukrainian dioceses times the Patriarchate of Constantinople Opel, sometimes the under standing of Moscow.

For autonomy led to the elimination of the existing until today Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, which still feels belonging to Constantine Opel in the 1920s. She found mainly as exile church in the United States spread (where it is considered by the Cold War as "the" Ukrainian Orthodox Church ). She has three dioceses Diaspora (Australia & New Zealand, UK and Western Europe), in Ukraine it is today represented approximately by repatriates.

In the 1940s, Ukraine formed in the then German occupied Poland from the Polish Orthodoxy, the Ukrainian Autonomous Orthodox Church, the scattered after the collapse of the Third Reich. It was banned in the Soviet Ukraine, and also plays otherwise no longer matters.

After the independence of Ukraine in 1991, part of the Ukrainian clergy split from the Moscow leadership and moved his center to Kiev. Since then, there is the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kiev Patriarchate, under the leadership of Metropolitan Filaret patriarch or II. , The autonomists were a temporary connection one with the Kyivan Patriarchate, but later split off again.

The remaining with the group under the Moscow Patriarch Metropolitan Volodymyr was also granted autonomy from the Russian Orthodox Patriarch after the collapse of the Soviet Union. It dominates today in the Russian dominated east of the country.

In fact, there are today in Ukraine so three major orthodox Churches ( Patriarchate of Moscow, Kiev Patriarchate, Autocephalous ) that compete for the status of the national church, and still (Russia near, nationalism and Western orientation ) are involved in the political tension in the country.

Add to that the very strong inflow wealthy Ukrainian Uniate ( Greek ) Catholic Church, an Eastern Catholic Church that follows the Orthodox rite, but is subordinate to the Pope in Rome and is headed by a major archbishop of Kiev and Halych. The relationship with the Moscow orthodoxy is stretched, it also comes to restitution and ownership questions of ecclesiastical goods.

To the west of the country, there is also still the Roman Catholic Church of the Western ( Latin ) rite, which is strongly influenced Polish.

Islam

Islam, once dominant in the south of the country ( Crimean Khanate ) is now represented by about 4 % of the population, but particularly in the Crimea with her from time immemorial Muslim Tatar or Turkic population ( there 12%). It shows also split, there is the Spiritual Board of Muslims of Crimea in Simferopol, and the smaller Spiritual Board of Muslims of Ukraine in Kiev. Islam is politically active, there is a party of Muslims of Ukraine ( the Kiev administration ), and also a strong nationalist, but pro-Western and turkey friendly Tatar party in the Crimea.

Judaism

Judaism, flourishing in Austrian Bukovina, was largely wiped out as in all of Central and Eastern Europe in the Holocaust during the Nazi period.

Today is located in Chernivtsi ( Czernowitz ) a museum of Jewish history and culture in Bukovina ( Чернівецький музей історії та культури євреїв Буковини, and since 2012 in Dnipropetrovsk the Menorah Center ( Еврейский общественный центр " Менора " ), also with a museum dedicated to Jewish history and the Holocaust in Ukraine. It is operated by the Jewish Congress of Ukraine (Ukrainian Jewish Congress ).