The Catholic Church in Russian-occupied Crimea fears it will lose its legal status after failing to meet a deadline for re-registering under Russian law.
"The Russian rulers demanded that Ukrainian churches and religious organisations file the documents required for their new registration, this time in line with Russian Federation law", explained Ukraine's Kiev-based Religious Freedom Institute. "Failing to fulful these demands will mean the withdrawal of legal status and hence their liquidation".
The statement was issued as the 1 March deadline passed for re-registering Catholic parishes and other religious communities in Crimea, which was forcibly annexed by Russia in March 2014. It said the requirement to re-register was designed to force clergy and church members to accept Russian citizenship and to ensure "complete subordination" to Russian law. It added that the denal of legal status would immediately affect the property rights of religious minorities, curtailing their capacity to recruit foreign priests, open bank accounts and publish and distribute literature, as well as to engage in charity work and conduct rites in hospitals, orphanages and prisons.
The Catholic Church's Odessa-Simferopol diocese includes a Crimea vicariate with parishes in Sevastopol, Teodozia, Kerch, Yalta, Dzankoy, Eupatoria and the regional capital, Simferopol, which continued functioning under restrictions after Crimea's occupation. The larger Greek Catholic Church traditionally makes up around 10 percent of the peninsula's 1.96 million inhabitants, and has also expressed fears about its future in Crimea.
In January, Crimea's Catholic auxiliary bishop, Mgr Jacek Pyl, told Poland's Catholic information agency, KAI, the local Church would remain canonically subject to Ukraine's Bishops Conference, but said Crimea's Russian-installed premier, Sergei Aksionov, had offered "broad help" with legal procedures after receiving guidelines from Moscow.
However, a senior Russian official, Vladimir Bobrovsky, told journalists last weekend only nine religious communities had so far been registered, with another 73 requests pending, out of the 1409 registered in Crimea before the annexation. Ukraine's breakaway Orthodox Church of the Kievan Patriarchate reported that its local archbishop had received a "recommendation" that he hand over his Church's land in Simferopol to the Russian Federal Security Service.
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