Founder of Ukrainian schism accused of fraud and forgery

Vikentiy Chekalin

In Australia, Southport County Court in Queensland sentenced 67-year-old Vincent Berg to 4 years and 3 months in prison for the repeated fraud and forgery. It is reported by the Greek agency Romfea.

Vincent Berg (pseudo. Vikentiy Chekalin, - Ed. note), who migrated from Russia in the early 90s, presented to the Australian authorities fake documents about his medical education, which allowed him to get a job as a psychiatrist.

According to the agency, Berg was also in the case of sexual abuse of minors, but the charges against him were dismissed later .

In 1990, Vikentiy Chekalin, together with the former bishop of Zhitomir, Ioan Bodnarchuk, “ordained” new “bishops” for the restored UAOC.

At that time, Chekalin was already defrocked in the Russian Orthodox Church for immoral offenses, and also managed to acquire a new "dignity" in the so-called "Catacomb Church". In 1987, Vikentiy Chekalin was sentenced to three years of imprisonment for molesting minors, but in 1988 he was released early.

In 1991, the Greek Catholic metropolitan of Lvov, Vladimir Sterniuk, admitted Vikentiy Chekalin under the jurisdiction of the UGCC and appointed him to the post of head of the Russian Orthodox Catholic Church. In the early 1990s, using the trust of the Popov family from Tula, "bishop" Vikentiy Chekalin stole a ten-year-old boy Andrei Popov and took him abroad to Australia, where he lived with him under the new name Berg and was a pastor of one of the Protestant churches.

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