Uzhhorod priest on SBU searches: They found what they had brought

The rector of the UOC Cathedral in Uzhhorod, Archpriest Dimitry Sidor, described how the SBU searches were carried out.

In a sermon dated December 16, 2022, Fr Dimitriy said that seven SBU officers came to their cathedral on Wednesday. They reported that the temple was booby-trapped and needed to be checked.

During an inspection of the temple premises, the security officers did not find any banned materials. They promised that they would record it in their protocols.

However, says Father Dimitriy, already on the way out one of them showed him a clipping of an old newspaper "Mir" with an article about the "triune Russia" with underlined phrases in advance.

"They found what they had brought," the priest commented on this "find" of the law enforcers.

Also, according to him, in the room where one of the priests rests after the service, representatives of the security services found two books published in Moscow and St. Petersburg.

"And so, regardless of the content, these books, simply because they were published in Moscow and St. Petersburg, were declared illegal," said Archpriest Dimitry.

He said that somewhere in the basement of the church, the SBU officers found several books on "Ukrainian autocephaly" published in Greece. According to the priest, these books cannot be classified as banned because they represent a criticism of the Tomos, and every Ukrainian has the right to agree or disagree with this document.

As an example of such disagreement with the contents of the Tomos, Fr Dimitry cited the statements made by UOC-KP head Filaret Denysenko, who claims: "The Tomos is not real and the OCU is only a small branch of the Istanbul Patriarchate".

The priest is sure that everything that is happening is a planned action aimed at discrediting the Church and that the "found" materials are nothing else but slander and untruth.

According to him, instead of protecting their citizens, the Security Services are engaged in falsification and slander, which demonstrates their godlessness.

Earlier, Bishop Nikita of Ivano-Frankivsk gave the details of the SBU searches.

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