Department for External Church Relations
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In the village of Vaslovivtsi in Ukraine raiders seize church building from parishioners whom they have been terrorizing for a number of years.
DECR Communication service, 23.10.2023.
Supporters of the ‘Orthodox Church of Ukraine’, with the support of the police, have seized the Church of the Dormition belonging to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in the village of Vaslovivtsi in the Chernivitsi region of Ukraine. As the Orthodox Life website reports with a link to the press service of the diocese of Chernivitsi and Bukovina, the raid took place on 19th October on the 1725th day of the prayer vigil of parishioners for the right to visit freely their church and preserve the Orthodox faith in Bukovina.
The seizure of the church building was carried out by young men wearing camouflage and with their faces covered. They came to Vaslovivtsi in the same bus that was used to seize the church building in the village of Stara Zhadova. The diocese suggested that it was the “same young men.”
“The police, carrying out illegal orders, cordoned off the faithful of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church from the OCU raiders, while the latter in turn managed to saw off the lock, enter the church building and desecrate it,” the report states.
After the seizure of the Church of the Dormition, the clerics of the ‘OCU’ conducted a ‘prayer service’ inside the church. It was noted that the ‘metropolitan of the OCU’ Daniil Kovalchuk had come to “share the joy of acquiring this long-awaited trophy.”
The supporters of the ‘OCU’ had been unable to seize the Dormition Church for five years. During this period the faithful of the Ukrainian Orthodox had to endure pressure from the regional administration, mockery, the removal of the church gates and repeated incursions by the supporters of the ‘OCU’ on the territory of the parish who were armed with instruments for the purpose of breaking in and so on.
At the same time, there is already a ‘monastery of the OCU’ in Vaslovivtsi, and in view of the little support it has among the local population, two buildings for the use of worship in the village are “not necessary or them.”
The community of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church continues its prayer vigil by its church building.
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