UOC believers hold another prayer standing at the walls of Vinnitsa RSA

Prayer at the entrance to Vinnitsa Regional State Administration. Photo: site of Vinnitsa Eparchy of the UOC

On June 19, 2019 at about 10:30 am, the bishops, clergy and laity of Vinnitsa, Tulchin and Mogiliov-Podolsk Eparchies of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church walked in a cross procession to the building of Vinnitsa Regional State Administration, where they held a prayer standing and handed over official addresses from each of the three eparchies to the governor of the region. Several thousand parishioners of the canonical Church took part in the procession.

Archpriest Vladimir Puchkov, a press secretary of Vinnitsa eparchy, told the UOJ correspondent that the head of the department for citizens’s appeals came out to the participants in the procession, whom the believers handed over the documents addressed at the head of Vinnitsa Regional State Administration.

After that, the UOC parishioners continued the cross procession and headed to the Transfiguration Cathedral where they handed a letter to the banned from priesthood Metropolitan Simeon (Shostatsky). In the letter, the believers of the canonical Church asked the "hierarch" of the new church structure to influence the actions of the "clergy" under his control, for the latter systematically incite interfaith enmity and provoke offences and acts of violence. The document was handed to the press secretary of the OCU eparchy, "hieromonk" Sophrony.

“They promised to give answers in the evening, so we are waiting,” Archpriest Vladimir commented the results of the meeting with representatives of Vinnitsa Regional State Administration and OCU.

Recall that on June 11, 2019, in the premises of Vinnitsa Eparchial Administration, Archbishop Varsonofy (Stoliar) of Vinnitsa and Bar, met with the chairman of the Office for Nationalities and Religions of Vinnitsa Regional State Administration Igor Saletsky. During the meeting, the parties came to an agreement "on the need to prevent raider seizure of temples."

However, as early as June 15, 2019, the activists of the OCU made another attempt to seize the UOC temple in Luka Meleshkovskaya.

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