Court halts re-registration of UOC Trinity Cathedral in Odesa

Trinity Cathedral in Odesa. Photo: find-way.com

The Commercial Court of the Odesa Region has barred state registrars from making changes to the registry in the case involving Holy Trinity Cathedral, Dumskaya reports.

The court issued the ruling in response to a lawsuit filed by believers of the Odesa Eparchy of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Representatives of the OCU had previously held a sham parish meeting late last year, re-registered the documents and amended the charter of the community’s legal entity. The amended charter was signed by OCU “bishop” Afanasiy Yavorskyi.

Lawyer Oleksandr Ivanov described the actions of Dumenko’s supporters as a raider-style takeover. “All you have to do is find parishioners – or simply people who do not belong to the church – hold a meeting, draw up minutes, submit the documents to the regional department of culture, nationalities, religions and cultural heritage protection, and then legally formalize the change of jurisdiction. I would call it a purely raider-style scheme.”

“Yes, there has been an attempt to transfer the church, but these documents are being challenged in court because there are many questions about how they were drawn up,” said Archpriest Maksimilian Pogorelovsky, head of the missionary department of the UOC’s Odesa Eparchy. “The people listed in the documents as members of the community did not even know that any meeting had taken place.”

Law enforcement and judicial authorities have registered the lawsuit filed by a group of UOC parishioners. Pending consideration of the case on the merits, the court has prohibited registrars from changing the community’s jurisdiction in the state registry. Regular services at Trinity Cathedral continue to be celebrated by clergy of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

Earlier, the UOJ reported that the OCU seized St. Alexander Church in Odesa with the help of a private security firm.

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