“Kommersant”: “Restitution of church property”
Vladimir Putin gives a boost to church property restitution.
The process of returning property to the church that was seized during the Soviet period got a new impulse after Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, meeting with Patriarch Kirill, said it was necessary to pass a law on the restitution of church property now owned by the government. The government has already responded to the remark. The Government Commission on Religious Associations yesterday discussed a new draft law, “On the Transfer of Religious Property to Religious Organizations,” whereby the church will get back not only federal, but also regional property.
The draft law on the handover to religious organizations of the property they formerly owned but that had been nationalized by the Soviet Government after 1917 has been in preparation at the Ministry of Economic Development since 2007. Even in the absence of the law, restitution of church property to its former owners is already underway. Over the past 15 years, the Russian Orthodox Church was given back over a hundred churches under government executive orders. During his meeting with Patriarch Kirill on January 5th, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said that the process should be speeded up and provided with a legal framework: “You know that today we proceed from the law On Religious Organizations, but this law is not enough… The Ministry of Economic Development jointly with the Ministry of Culture have prepared another draft law on the transfer to religious organizations of the property they formerly owned.”
In addition, the Prime Minister said, the Ministry of Culture has prepared a draft law under which the state will allocate money for building back and restoring monuments handed over to the church. This meets an earlier request of the representatives of religious denominations that complained that they have no money to “restore destroyed places of worship.” Thus, the state will have an opportunity to allocate budget money to restore and refurbish the property it will no longer own (the 2010 budget has allocated over 2 billion roubles for the purpose).
The government reacted to the Prime Minister’s remarks very quickly. During an unscheduled meeting of the task force of the Government Commission on Religious Associations yesterday, the task force was charged with preparing a draft law titled “On the Transfer of Religious Property to Religious Organizations.” “We have managed to discuss practically all the articles of the draft law, but we have run into some disputed points. For example, should all the church property be transferred to the Russian Orthodox Church? What should we do about churches that are part of FSIN (Penal Enforcement System)?” the Commission’s executive secretary, Andrei Sebentsov, told Kommersant. “We have agreed that all these problems will be hammered out by February.”
The text of the document has been amended significantly over the past year (Kommersant gave an account of the fate of the draft law on February 24, 2009). Thus, initially one of the conditions on which historical property was to be handed over was a ten-year ban on “changing the function of the property handed over and transferring it to third persons.” This was the condition set earlier by the Ministry of Economic Development, which feared that the church would use the property for commercial purposes (sell it or lease it). Now the text contains only the proviso that the state’s gift should be used “in accordance with the aims of the activities of the religious organization.” Under the new draft, in addition to federal property, religious organizations will also get municipal property, as religious leaders had insisted all along. “There are no regulatory documents to enable property being transferred from regional to religious ownership,” Patriarch Kirill complained during his last meeting with the Prime Minister.
Under the document, in order to acquire property, a religious organization has to file an application with the authorized agency, “proving its right to the property in question.” So far, such an agency has not been named, but Kommersant’s sources in government say it is likely to be Rosimushchestvo.
The draft law speaks not only of the restitution of churches and land, but also of the property of museums and collections from the Russian museum fund as well as archive documents. This would hopefully prevent the kind of rows that broke out in November 2009, when the Ministry of Culture decided to transfer the icon of Our Lady of Toropets from the State Russian Museum to the Alexander Nevsky Church, a newly built church in the elite country compound Knazhye Ozero. The museum workers were up against the proposal because they feared that the icon would be damaged.
The church must concede only especially valuable objects: monuments and ensembles on the UNESCO world heritage list (for example, St Basil’s Cathedral or the cathedrals in the Moscow Kremlin, about twenty such sites in all).
“The draft law affects first and foremost the Russian Orthodox Church, because it will receive the greater part of religious property,” says Roman Lunkin, Director of the Religion and Law Institute. “If the law is passed in its present shape, it will infringe upon the rights of museum workers who may be deprived of their exhibits.” Real estate experts are also convinced that if the draft law is passed, the Russian Orthodox Church may emerge as the major non-governmental property owner in the country.
At present, there are 234 Orthodox monasteries and 244 convents, 16,000 Orthodox parishes, and 4699 Sunday schools. The Roman Catholic Church owns 220 parishes, although a third of them have no church buildings. There are more than 4000 mosques and about 70 synagogues in Russia. The size of churches varies between 5 and 50,000 square metres and land plots from 0.3 to 10 hectares. At present, religious organizations do not own that property, but hold it in perpetuity.
“The state should not squander national wealth,” says State Duma deputy Vladimir Kashin, deputy chairman of the Communist Party’s Central Committee, who opposes the initiative. “Why turn the church into another billionaire?” “History does not record the church misusing its property,” said the head of the Moscow Patriarchy press service, Vladimir Vigilyansky. “The Russian Orthodox Church is the most unselfish social institution in this nation, and it would be immoral to suspect it of intending to sell buildings.” “We are not thinking in terms of replenishing our budget by renting out premises,” the chairman of the Congress of Jewish Religious Communities and Organizations of Russia, Rabbi Zinovy Kogan, told Kommersant. “But we do not rule it out, although it would not apply to prayer houses.” What has been stolen should be given back, says co-chairman of the Council of Muftis of Russia, Nafigulla Ashirov. “Muslims have no other buildings except places of worship, so it would be hard to misuse these premises.”
The Ministry of Economic Development declined to comment on the draft law and suggested that Kommersant make a written query. However, when the drafting of the law started, its representatives admitted that the law would relieve the ministry of budgetary spending to maintain religious buildings.
Pavel Korobov
