Culture Ministry grants UGCC 49-year use of UNESCO church in Zhovkva
Ukraine's Ministry of Culture has granted the UGCC the right to use the wooden Holy Trinity Church, built in 1720 in Zhovkva, for 49 years.
Ukraine's Ministry of Culture has granted a Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC) community the right to use the historic Holy Trinity Church in Zhovkva, Lviv region, free of charge for 49 years, Interfax-Ukraine reports.
Under Order No. 1524, the church building has been entrusted to the Greek Catholic Parish of the Holy Trinity for worship services, religious rites, and gatherings according to an agreed schedule.
The wooden church is a nationally protected architectural monument and a UNESCO World Heritage Site, listed as part of the "Wooden Tserkvas of the Carpathian Region in Poland and Ukraine."
The Holy Trinity Church was built in 1720 with funds donated by parishioners to replace an earlier wooden church dating from 1601 that had been destroyed by fire. The church was closed during the Soviet era, and both the building and its iconostasis were restored in the 1970s.
In 1991, the church was handed over to an Orthodox community that remained there until 1993. In 1996, the building was transferred to the UGCC.
The church was added to the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2013. Its iconostasis subsequently underwent another restoration between 2019 and 2022 at the Lviv branch of the National Research and Restoration Center.
As the UOJ previously reported, the Ministry of Culture pledged to speed up the removal of the UOC from the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra.
