The blueprint of church raiding: then and now
Church seizures in Ukraine may appear to be a tragical phenomenon of recent years. In reality, their story began in the waning years of the Soviet Union, when the template still used today was first established.
On October 29, 1989, one of the first forcible transfers to the UGCC took place in Lviv – the seizure of the Transfiguration Cathedral. The date appears in the documents of the Bishops’ Councils of the Russian Orthodox Church in 1989 and 1990, in the materials of the 1990 Local Council, and in secular reference literature. Official statistics count the beginning of church seizures in Western Ukraine from that day.
Attention should be paid not only to the date, but also to the place. The Transfiguration Cathedral was not just any church. On September 20, 1948, Proto-presbyter Havriil Kostelnyk – the priest who in 1946 headed the reunification of the Galician Uniates with the Orthodox Church – was shot dead with two bullets as he exited the cathedral after the Divine Liturgy. The official version of the USSR Ministry of State Security named 25-year-old OUN member Vasyl Pankiv as the gunman and Zynoviy Tershakovets, head of the OUN regional leadership in Lviv, as the organizer.
Exactly forty-one years separate those two dates. The church where the priest who formalized the reunification of the Uniates with Orthodoxy was murdered became the first object of the reverse movement into schism. Such coincidences are difficult to dismiss as accidental.
The letter that changed nothing
The Orthodox Church responded to the events in Lviv quickly and publicly. On November 6, 1989, Archbishop Irenei (Seredniy) of Lviv, who had been transferred to the see less than two months before the seizure, together with the diocesan clergy, addressed an open letter to Pope John Paul II. The letter demanded an end to incitement toward pogroms and church seizures by the Uniates.
Reference literature records that no response followed the appeal. Persecution of Orthodox Christians intensified.
On December 1, 1989, Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR Mikhail Gorbachev met Pope John Paul II at the Vatican. After that meeting, the UGCC received legal status. When national-democratic forces won local elections in the western Ukrainian regions in the early 1990s, the Uniates received unrestricted support from local authorities. Seizure, appeal to the pope, silence, political legalization, support from local authorities – the chronology speaks for itself.
Winter 1990: Ivano-Frankivsk
On January 28, 1990, after the Divine Liturgy in the cathedral of Ivano-Frankivsk, regional executive committee chairman Vadym Boichuk solemnly handed UGCC Bishop Pavlo (Vasylyk) a document transferring ownership of the Resurrection Cathedral to the Greek Catholic Church. The cathedral of the Ivano-Frankivsk Diocese passed from the Orthodox Church to the UGCC by decision of the regional executive committee, three months after the events in Lviv.
This was already an example of a church being transferred to another jurisdiction by order of the authorities.
The document itself was formally correct. But the cathedral was handed over to another confession by executive decree, without Church discussion, without the consent of the community, and without any procedure for resolving property disputes. Within the Soviet legal system of the time, such a decision appeared dubious, adopted under the pressure of the political circumstances described above.
What the Bishops’ Council recorded
The seizure of Orthodox churches by Greek Catholics and autocephalists in Western Ukraine became the subject of discussion at the Bishops’ Council of the Russian Orthodox Church on January 30–31, 1990. The Local Council later that same year was likewise forced to address the situation, stating that the Church had found itself in conditions unprecedented in the post-revolutionary period.
A commission for the distribution of churches between Orthodox and Uniates met in Lviv from March 8 to 13, 1990. On March 22, the Greek Catholic Church issued a statement declaring, in agreement with Pope John Paul II, that all the commission’s documents were invalid. The Uniates withdrew from the commission, and church seizures multiplied. On April 10 of the same year, the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church again issued a protest.
All of this is documented: council protocols, Synodal resolutions, open letters, executive committee decrees, correspondence with the Vatican. Taken together, they reveal a clear pattern: seizure – appeal to higher authorities – no response – legalization after the fact – expansion of the raiding practice.
The same pattern operated thirty-five years ago. It is operating now as well.
The same city, thirty-three years later
On March 28, 2023, the Cathedral of the Nativity of Christ in Ivano-Frankivsk – at that moment the last church of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church in the city – was seized. The takeover was carried out by supporters of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine. Raiders entered through side doors, opened the main entrance, and pushed parishioners down the cathedral steps. Tear gas was used inside the church. Police did not intervene.
In 1990, in the same city, the cathedral was transferred by executive decree, without tear gas and without people being shoved aside. In 2023, in the same city, the cathedral passed to another confession with the participation of masked men in balaclavas. The method became harsher, but the legal framework remained the same: the seizure takes place de facto and is later legalized. The state apparatus either remains absent or provides cover. The Orthodox side files lawsuits and appeals that go unanswered.
The first precedent was Lviv in 1989. The second was Ivano-Frankivsk in 1990. The third was the same Ivano-Frankivsk in 2023. Each time the starting point was identical: the transfer of a church without solid legal grounds is presented as an accomplished fact, after which the matter is declared closed and objections are ignored.
How much longer will history keep stepping on the same rake, granting freedom to legalized arbitrariness?
