NEW UKRAINIAN CHURCH BRINGS FEARS OF VIOLENCE

KIEV, Ukraine: Tensions are escalating in Ukraine as it prepares to establish a full- fledged Orthodox church of its own. The planned religious rupture from the Russian Orthodox Church is a potent — possibly explosive — mix of politics, religious faith and national identity. The imminent creation of the new Ukrainian church raises deep concerns about what will happen to the approximately 12,000 churches in Ukraine that are now under the Moscow Patriarchate. Since the late 1600s, the Orthodox Church in Ukraine had been a wing of the Russian Orthodox Church rather than ecclesiastically independent. Many Ukrainians chafed at that arrangement. The Istanbul- based Orthodox patriarchate has now removed an anathema against Ukrainian church leaders, a major step toward granting full recognition to a Ukrainian church that does not answer to the Moscow Patriarchate.