Permit Law Prevents Christians From Obtaining Places of Worship

(Forum 18) – An unofficial “red line” bars non-Russian Orthodox from securing new places of worship in the centre of the Far Eastern city of Khabarovsk , Protestants and Catholics reported. The local authorities “don’t let us anywhere near the city centre,” Pentecostal pastor Aleksandr Pankratov complained to Forum 18 News Service. One local lawyer says no Protestant church has been allocated a plot of land in central Khabarovsk for four years. The Immaculate Conception Catholic parish is even unable to regain its historical church, confiscated in 1933. “Twelve of our elderly parishioners were baptised and made their first communion in that building,” parish priest Fr Joseph McCabe told Forum 18. Admitting the existence of this ban, regional religious affairs official Mikhail Svishchev maintained that “every city tries to preserve its historical part.”