The court orders re-registration of UOC community in favor of OCU as legal

Holy Protection fortress-church in Sutkivtsi village. Photo: tamtour.com.ua

On April 6, 2021, the Grand Chamber of the Supreme Court of Ukraine rejected the claim of the religious community of the UOC in the village of Sutkivtsi, Khmelnytsky region and recognized its re-registration with the OCU as legal.

Earlier, several courts sided with the community of the canonical Church, which suffered from the raider attack, including the Economic Court of Kyiv in February 2020 and the Court of Appeal. However, the decision was canceled at the cassation instance, according to the OCU’s Facebook page.

This is the first time since the beginning of forceful seizures of UOC churches in Ukraine when the lawsuit went through all the courts. And for the first time, the court sided with the invaders.

The meeting of the religious community of the village and the collection of signatures on its reassignment took place on February 23, 2019. However, then more than 300 villagers voted in support of the UOC, i.e. the majority of believers. According to Archpriest of the UOC Vladimir Stepanishin, there were about 60 real supporters of the OCU in the village at that time.

At the same time, a fake message appeared on the Web that the new chairman of the Rivne Regional State Administration Vitaliy Koval signed an order to re-register the communities of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in favor of the OCU.

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