Gethsemane Church organized a public roundtable on the problem of occult professions included in the National Professions Classifier of Ukraine. Such a decision of the Cabinet of Ministers provides sorcerers, astrologers, chiromancers with an official status – thus pension and public education.

Representatives of various denominations, local government authorities and scholars were invited to start with a prayer. Pastor Valeriy Marchenko disclosed the heart of the matter – the Ukraine’s Constitution begins with “responsibility before God”and this excludes all public sorcery and occult. Father Volodimir Vaskiv, the vice rector of Ukrainian Autocephalos Orthodox Church seminary warned that such government decisions opened the nation for demonic influence.

Head of the Family and Youth Lviv Regional Dept Andriy Rozhnyatovskiy, explained that those professions were given the official status because in Ukraine there were many of them and they had to be taxed. The vice rector of the Ukrainian Catholic University, Miroslav Marinovich, completely supported our position and said that such occupations ruined the Christrian heritage of the country and were beyond the public moral priorities. The outcome of the roundtable was the united letter of address to the President, the Prime- minister, the Head of the Supreme council with the request to exclude sorcerers, chiromancer, astrologers from the national Classifier of professions , on the basis of Constitution and the citizens appeal.