Continued attacks on churches of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church

Unlawful actions against parishes of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church have continued in various regions of Ukraine. The beginning of 2018 has been marked with a number of wicked actions committed by nationalists including an attempt to block the Kiev Monastery of the Caves and repeated acts of vandalism against Orthodox churches.

A few days ago, the news broke that the hospital church of Our Lady of Kazan at the National Radiation Medicine Research was defiled. According to the website of the Metropolia of Kiev, during the night of January 12, some defilers, who had got into the church, dumped to the floor the Holy Gifts prepared for the communion of the sick.

Shortly before that, during the night of January 10, vandals attacked the church of the Protecting Veil in the city of Chernomorsk, Odessa region, the diocesan site reported. The culprits damaged a considerable part of the church vessels, broke the sanctuary doors, stole parishioners’ donations and strewed all the floors with powder from fire extinguishers.

The Odessa diocesan press service reported that in the same regions on January 9 an attempt was made at provocation when a group of aggressively mooded representatives of radical nationalist organizations began gluing over the doors and walls of Orthodox churches with stickers containing disinformation and insults to the clergy of the canonical Church. With the support of parishioners the hooligans were stopped. The faithful took saw in this action an outrage against the paternal faith, committed with special blasphemy in the Christmastide.

According to reports from the Ukrainian Orthodox Church’s information and education department, in 2017, 19 cases of defilement and robbery of churches were registered in the country, but none of these crimes has been solved so far and the culprits have not been punished.

DECR Communication Service

Print publication

Continued attacks on churches of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church

Patriarch

Department Chairman

Sermons

Patriarch

Department Chairman

Sermons