In Stavchany, UOC community prays in private house after church seizure

The UOC community of Stavchany during a service. Photo: UOJ

In the village of Stavchany, the Khotyn Deanery, the faithful of the Archangel Michael parish of the UOC have been forced to pray in a private home adapted for worship for the past six months, following the seizure of their church.

On April 21, 2025, – Bright Monday – an incident occurred that radically changed the life of the parish. In the morning, the parishioners, led by their rector, Mitred Archpriest Vyacheslav Hohol, held a church service, and in the evening they gathered for the reading of an akathist.

During the service, supporters of the OCU arrived at the church, led by a "priest" from the village of Vladychna. They forcibly removed the rector and parishioners from the building, claiming they had “documents” for the church and now considered themselves its “owners.”

By a strange coincidence, on April 23, 2025, just two days after the church was seized, Archpriest Vyacheslav was stopped by the police in the city of Chernivtsi for a document check. After verifying his ID, they invited him to accompany them to complete paperwork so that he would “not be bothered” in the future. Later, the priest was informed that he must now report to the Territorial Recruitment Center (TRC) for a medical examination required for military service.

As Father Vyacheslav himself notes, in the three years of the war, neither the military nor the police had ever stopped him, which leads him to believe this “coincidence” may not be accidental.

Since then, the UOC community has been gathering for Sunday and feast-day services outdoors and in an adapted residential home.

It is worth recalling that in February 2025, OCU cleric Hryshchuk organized a fake parish meeting in Stavchany. The parish rector emphasized at the time that most of those who voted for the transfer [to the OCU] had never attended the church.

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