Department for External Church Relations
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People from the ‘Orthodox Church of Ukraine’ smash down the doors of the cathedral in the city of Bila Tsirkva and seize it.
DECR Communication service, 10.07.2023.
Around six o’clock in the morning of 10th July and group of people burst into the territory of the Transfiguration Cathedral in the city of Bila Tserkva in the Kiev region of Ukraine, broke down the doors and seized the church building.
As reported by the information and education department of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church with a link to the website of the diocese of Bila Tserkva, the raiders initially broke down the wooden door and then for three hours broke down the metal door of the church. The diocese reported that it was adherents of the ‘Orthodox Church of Ukraine’ who broke down the doors, headed by a ‘cleric’ of this schismatic structure called Mykolai Hopainich, who also serves as a city deputy.
The telegram channel Dozor reports that well-built men blocked the gates and reused to admit parishioners onto the territory of the church and applied physical force to them. Witnesses also claim that during the seizure the people from the ‘OCU’ broke the arm of a woman from the Ukrainian Orthodox Church inside the cathedral while the police either refused to act or ejected parishioners who had come to the cathedral once they realized it was under siege.
Around nine o’clock in the morning Mykolai Hopainich published a video in which he announced the Transfiguration Cathedral had now been seized.
The metropolitan of Bila Tserkva and Bohuslav Augustine denounced as illegal what had happened and stated that the faithful would now back down and would defend their holy sites. He expressed the hope that the Lord would be merciful towards the humility and prayers of Orthodox Christians and thanked God that he had “witnessed his fidelity to the Church, albeit in a little way.”
The diocese contests the decision of the city council to transfer the church building to the ‘OCU’ and the case is now under judicial review. However, the schismatics, without waiting for a verdict, took matters into their own hands and forcibly seized the cathedral.
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