A PCU cleric, while seizing a church, personally cut the locks of the church in Cherniavka
A PCU cleric rejected the rector's request to provide copies of the meeting minutes, calling him an "enemy of the people."
In the village of Cherniavka in Zhytomyr Oblast, PCU cleric PCU Serhiy Yanchuk seized the UOC Church of St. Paraskeva, personally cutting the locks off the doors of the shrine and telling the rector that the UOC community has no rights whatsoever.
The seizure was preceded by a dialogue in which the church rector, Father Alexander, asked to be provided with documents confirming ownership of the building. The priest proposed giving the faithful copies of the meeting minutes, lists of signatures and names, so that the community could review them over the course of several days and express its position.
However, Serhiy Yanchuk rejected these demands, calling into question the legal rights of the UOC community. "What rights do you have here? Being a management center of an aggressor state, you still have the audacity to say that you can review something? That we owe you some kind of report?" — Yanchuk declared.
He accused the clergyman of losing the "fear of God" and claimed that the UOC clergyman was allegedly shaming the people and the Church by "serving the enemy" on Ukrainian soil. "We are doing our work on our land and in our church. And you are an enemy of the people and of our church. I won't even shake your hand now," — Yanchuk said, ending the conversation.
Immediately after the conversation, he proceeded to break open the doors, and upon entering the church, he smiled and described the church property as "Muscovite property."
As the SPJ reported, in Kuzmine, raiders cut the locks on a UOC church.
