OCU short-staffed to serve in seized temples

One of the cases of church raiding in the Zhitomir region of Ukraine is the seizure of the St. Nicholas Church in the village of Vorsovka

The new church structure urgently needs “priests”, for which a recruitment of graduates and students of higher religious educational institutions of the OCU is announced. The advertisement was published on Facebook by the OCU “bishop” Paisiy Kukharchuk.

Even the lack of spiritual knowledge is not an impediment at all – for those who do not have relevant qualification, special courses will be opened in the new religious organization.

“With my blessing, courses will be held at the Eparchial Administration for those who wish to take holy orders. According to the canons, the holy orders can be approached by males who have reached the age of majority, are married by their first marriage and have no canonical impediments to this,” reads the advertisement of the OCU “hierarch”.

In the end, however, Paisiy Kukharchuk pointed out that after finishing the courses, the subsequent completion of studies in higher religious schools would be a prerequisite.

The adherents of the “Ukrainian Church” do not even hide the fact that during the seizure of churches they don’t really think of who will serve there. In the village of Singury, Zhitomir region, for example, during the seizure of the Holy Resurrection Church, a group of persons declared that they considered themselves the successor of the UOC community and claimed the church. In this case, one of the activists could not answer the question who would become the "rector". “I am the rector of the new community,” she said after some confusion.

At the same time, members of the UOC KP in the village of Vorsovka demanded the eviction of a priest of the canonical Church, the head of the church “voluntarily transferred” to the OCU, from the gatehouse where he lived. "All you need to know about ‘KP’ under the brand of ‘OCU’!” the head of the UOC Legal Department Archpriest Alexander Bakhov commented on the developments in the village. “Raiders from the "Kiev Patriarchate" of the village of Vorsovka, Zhitomir region, want to evict Father Vasily, the rector of the temple, from the premises! Truly a Christian act, in the winter, in the cold and out on the street!”

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