Photo: Facebook / Yuri Gudimenko. Some rights reserved.
The Orthodox Church in Ukraine has found itself in the centre of a scandal: after a child died in the south Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhya before New Year, an Orthodox priest refused to conduct the last rites during the funeral. How could such a thing happen? The two year-old boy had been baptised according to the Orthodox canon, the case obviously did not involve suicide and his mother, according to witnesses, pleaded with the priest on her knees to complete the funeral rites.
