Department for External Church Relations
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Raiders beat up Ukrainian Orthodox Church’s faithful while seizing a church in Chornohuzy village
DECR Communication Service, 09/05/2024
On 8th May 2024, a group of raiders belonging to the schismatic OCU broke into the territory of the Church of the Nativity of the Most Holy Theotokos of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Chornohuzy village, Chernivtsi region, Ukraine. According to eyewitnesses, the perpetrators attacked the parishioners who tried to defend their church, Dozor_kozak1 Telegram channel reports.
The raiders used tear gas and beat up the parishioners, literally throwing out the men and the women standing at the doors of their church, Union of Orthodox Journalists also reports.
According to the mass media, the OCU activists, having dealt with the faithful, cut off the church locks and seized the building. Police officers present at the scene did not interfere.
Dozor_kozak1 Telegram channel also published a video showing the OCU raiders inside the Church of the Nativity of the Most Holy Theotokos, pretending to be praying. “But they go further in their low act. Eyewitnesses report that the officiating OCU cleric is wearing stolen vestments of the church rector, Father Antoniy Fedorashchak,” the post says.
Previously, the UOJ had reported that on 13th April 2024, according to the mass media, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church’s community in Chornohuzy village had voted to join the OCU. However, as a spokesperson of the Diocese of Chenivtsi and Bukovina stated on 16th April, the actual religious community of the Church of the Nativity of the Most Holy Theotokos remained faithful to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and its Primate, His Beatitude Metropolitan Onuphry. In fact, it had been a community of the OCU church located in the same village that had voted in favour of the transfer. As the rector of the Church of the Nativity of the Most Holy Theotokos, Mitred Archpriest Antoniy Fedorashchak, explained, the religious community had held its meeting on the feast of the Annunciation, 7th April, and the parishioners had voted to remain in the bosom of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.
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