Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has signed a law to enact the transfer of St. Andrew's Church in Kyiv to the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople for permanent use.
The parliament's web page where the Law on Specific Use of St. Andrew's Church of the National Sanctuary Complex "Sophia of Kyiv'"(No. 9208) is posted, says that the document was submitted to the president on October 18 and returned with his signature on November 7.
Read alsoKyiv Patriarchate says Ukrainian Orthodox lavras should belong to Ukrainian church
As UNIAN reported earlier, Ukraine's parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, on October 18 passed presidential bill No. 9208 on transferring Kyiv-based St. Andrew's Church to the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople for permanent use.
The law establishes that the state-owned religious building of the church, which is a major Baroque church located in Kyiv, is to be handed over to the Ecumenical Patriarchate for religious services, rites, ceremonies and processions.
At the same time, this handover does not entail its exclusion from the list of facilities of immovable cultural heritage of the National Sanctuary Complex "Sophia of Kyiv."
On November 3, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I thanked Poroshenko for the transfer of the church's building to the Ecumenical Patriarchate.
Adviser to the president of Ukraine, Director of the National Institute for Strategic Studies Rostyslav Pavlenko said on November 5 the renovation of the church might be completed by 2020.
