Penitential canon read at Zabolottia’s persecuted UOC parish
The Orthodox community of St. Elijah on Bukovyna, deprived of its church in May 2025, is serving the services of Great Lent in a renovated space adapted for prayer.
On February 25, 2026, the St. Elijah community of the village of Zabolottia in Bukovyna read the third part of the Great Penitential Canon of St. Andrew of Crete. This was reported by a UOJ correspondent.
The service took place in premises that the faithful arranged for worship after their church was seized.
The reading of the canon was led by the rector, Mitred Archpriest Mykola Tsurkan.
As the UOJ previously reported, on May 30, 2025, clergy and activists of the OCU, with police support, broke into the grounds of the UOC’s St. Elijah Church in the village of Zabolottia in Bukovyna and seized the church by force.