UOC community: Being left without temple is better than taking Judas’ path

Transfiguration church in Keleberdy. Photo: wikiredia.ru

The religious community of the UOC in the village of Keleberdy, Poltava region, from which the patron takes away the Transfiguration church he had helped to build, declared their loyalty to the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church and their unwillingness to "take the path of Judas for the sake of some earthly riches." Believers of Keleberdy told about the history of the construction of the rural church and the current situation around it in the "Dozor" project on the First Cossack channel.

According to the parishioners, earlier on the territory of the village, which in the past was one of the outposts of the Zaporizhzhya Sich, there were seven stone Orthodox churches, but all of them were destroyed.

“In 1998, our community had a very strong desire to build at least one temple,” said Tatyana Marchenko, a parishioner of the Transfiguration church. “First, a religious community of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church was created and registered, and then a meeting took place with one of the entrepreneurs of Komsomolsk city, now Horishny Plavni, Alexander Moroz. He gladly offered to help build the temple. The construction customer was the St. Nicholas Cathedral of the UOC in Komsomolsk. There were big battles over the allocation of land, because they wanted to build a cafe on this place. From 1999 to 2005, there was active construction at the expense of the patron. But the villagers were not aloof either – they took an active part in all the ancillary work."

The consecration of the temple took place in 2005. The construction patron declared it a gift to the Orthodox community of the village, and the believers, led by the priest's family, began to improve the church and the adjacent territory.

“In 2009, for an unknown reason, the notary's office re-registered the church in the name of patron Alexander Moroz,” said Galina Chesnokova, a believer of the UOC. “But no one, even in a nightmare, could have imagined that this year the church would be taken away from us and transferred to another denomination without our knowledge. Thus, we are forced to leave this building. We cannot serve with schismatics. Each person has their own values – family, homeland, faith. Now they decide for us what language we should pray in and what confession we should be in."

In the same 2009, the UOC community and Alexander Moroz signed an agreement on the lease of the premises of the church, the belfry, and the parish house.

And so, as parishioner Irina Peremena said, the parish rector was officially informed that on March 31, 2021, the contract expires and the owner wants to break it, and “therefore, within seven days, our community must vacate the premises of the church, and the rector – the parish house where he lives with his family."

The believers emphasized that there is no other religious community on the territory of Keleberdy village, people are not willing to change anything in their spiritual life and remain faithful to the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

At the same time, the OCU community is located in the town of Horyshni Plavni – 10 km from Keleberdy. According to the believers of the UOC, "it is with this community that they plan to conclude an agreement for the performance of divine services in our church."

“Time does not stand still, power is changing, politics is changing, and only the Church remains constant, for Christ is in Her. Our community does not want to take the path of Judas for the sake of some earthly riches or something else. It is better to leave the building and not betray God, because the sin of schism, according to the teachings of the holy fathers, is not washed away even by blood,” stressed Oksana Zadvornaya, a parishioner of the Transfiguration church of the UOC.

Earlier, the UOJ wrote that the entrepreneur Alexander Moroz, who built the temple in Keleberdy, decided to transfer it to the OCU, actually expelling the believers of the canonical Church into the street. Prior to that, he suggested that the community and its rector, Archpriest Mikhail Pavlyuk, move to a schismatic structure, which was refused.

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