Cherkasy Eparchy comments on dispute over church in Helmiaziv

Holy Trinity Church in the village of Helmiaziv. Photo: Screenshot from TSN's YouTube channel

The legal department of the Cherkasy Eparchy of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) has commented to UOJ on a lawsuit filed by prosecutors seeking to seize Holy Trinity Church in the village of Helmiaziv from the UOC community, which has worshiped there for more than 30 years.

In 1990, local authorities handed over the abandoned, unclaimed church building to the faithful. To make the church available for worship, the community used its own funds to purchase another building in the village to house the museum that had occupied the church. In October 2014, the faithful obtained a certificate of ownership for Holy Trinity Church.

According to the eparchy's legal department, the community's ownership rights are supported by two legal provisions: Article 18 of Ukraine's Law "On the Protection of Cultural Heritage," which allows architectural monuments to be privately owned, and Article 344 of the Civil Code, under which long-term, good-faith possession and maintenance of property can provide legal grounds for recognizing ownership rights.

The prosecution's claim is based on a 2014 entry made by a state registrar that contains no information about how ownership of the church was acquired. On this basis, prosecutors alleged that documents had been forged, even though no criminal proceedings concerning forgery had previously been initiated against either the community or the village authorities. Prosecutors also cited Soviet-era documents from 1979, disregarding the fact that the Ukrainian government did not add Holy Trinity Church to the State Register of Immovable Monuments until July 2023, under Cabinet of Ministers Resolution No. 693.

The court of first instance declined to take into account the relevant legal provisions or the faithful's decades of care for the building and ruled in favor of the prosecution. The parish, led by a rector who has been actively involved in volunteer work since the beginning of the war, continues to hold services and is preparing an appeal against the ruling to defend its legal right to the church.

As the UOJ previously reported, the Odesa Prosecutor's Office appealed a ruling concerning a UOC church to the Supreme Court.

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