Legal fictions and presumptions in church litigation (according to the statute on the church court of 2008)

The article considers the current situation in the church legal proceedings concerning classical means of legal technique such as presumptions and legal fictions. On the example of the current Statute on the Church Court of 2008 it is shown that in the modern legal proceedings of the Russian Orthodox Church, legal fictions are used quite widely. Using the method of comparison with the modern procedural legislation of Russia, it shows that a number of legal fictions in the church legal proceedings in general perform functions which are similar to secular law. It also points to fictions that facilitate the speedy consideration of cases, but such analogies are absent in secular law. It is noted that: 1) most of the legal fictions used in the Church Court has a content which is fundamentally different from secular one, being purely ecclesiastical; 2) a number of secular legal fictions are directly embedded in Church law. So, conclusions are drawn about: 1) there is the great similarity of the structure of secular and ecclesiastical courts; 2) the greater flexibility of the ecclesiastical court comparing with the secular one, because the secular court does not recognize the decision and fiction of the Church Court. Besides the similarity of secular and ecclesiastical courts, there are also undoubted differences in content, based primarily on the ecclesiological model of the Orthodox Church