Cherkasy authorities move to transfer UOC parish to “Ukrainian Patriarchate”

Representatives of the OCU near the UOC’s St. John Church in the village of Velyka Yablunivka, Cherkasy region. Photo: video screenshot

In Velyka Yablunivka, Cherkasy region, an attempt has been made to change the canonical affiliation of a religious community of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church by preparing documents for the church’s “transfer” into the structure of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine. This was reported by Pershyi Kozatskyi.

According to the source, a so-called “transition” of the UOC’s St. John Church to the OCU has been set in motion in the locality. For the purposes of holding a meeting, individuals with no connection to the parish were brought to the church; they took part in decision-making and in signing the documents.

It is reported that OCU representatives openly stated that they were collecting signatures in order to transfer the parish. Statements were also heard that the church should be “under the state flag,” and that services, in their words, should be celebrated “in Ukrainian, not in the dead Old Church Slavonic language.”

After the meeting ended, participants chanted nationalist slogans and then left the church grounds.

The rector of St. John Church, an elderly priest, appealed to those gathered to give glory to God in the first place, but his words were not received by the participants.

Earlier, the UOJ reported that a court in Khmelnytskyi awarded the Dormition Church in Letychiv to a fictitious OCU community.

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