Parish hinder KP provocation in temple where UOC Primate’s father served

Храм в честь Иоанна Богослова в селе Бережонка

In the temple of St. John the Theologian of Berezhonka village, Chernovtsy region, adjacent to the small home of the Primate, the Kiev Patriarchate and radical activists are campaigning for the “Ukrainian church” and intimidating believers, but the community remains loyal to the canonical Church. The village of Berezhonka is located next to Korytny – the homeland of His Beatitude Onufriy. It was in this temple that his father once served.

On February 24, 2019, during the Sunday service, people who do not take part in the life of the church, including members of the UOC KP, gathered near the temple. A retired geography teacher actively campaigned for the “Ukrainian church,” who, under the former USSR, handed over to the authorities lists of those who attend the church.

One of the parishioners said that immediately after the end of the service, the activists, who had never gone to the church, began to shout out that they were demanding a meeting.

The rector of the temple, Fr. Nikolai Ivanchuk, asked activists to leave the temple, and suggested if they wanted to hold some meetings, then they had to do it outside the walls of the church. The community managed to push back the visitors from the temple.

52 activists gathered at the temple together with three priests of the UOC KP. At the same time, there were more than 80 UOC believers. Supporters of the UOC KP began to shout insults and accuse the parishioners of "praying for Moscow, Putin and his army."

According to the believers, in their village the temple is run by the churchwarden and the “twenty”: they have the keys to the temple, and they pay the salary to the churchwarden. Believers explained that the churchwarden who supports the UOC was ill, so his deputy was in charge of everything.

The deputy head of the church council proposed to start collecting signatures of those who are “for Moscow” and “for Ukraine”.

The religious community expressed support for the canonical Church and continued to pray.

The activists began to provoke a religious community, shouting accusations about the "Moscow Church".

As a result, the activists and members of the UOC KP began collecting signatures for the transition to the “Ukrainian church”, and when the UOC parishioners refused to sign, they were told that if they did not sign, they would be considered to have “transferred” to the new church “automatically.”

The community of the temple, which the priests and believers of the UOC temples from neighboring villages came to support, refused to participate in the collection of signatures and held its own meeting and signatures collection. All believers spoke in support of the canonical Church. 210 people put their signatures under the list. To prevent the raiders from seizing the church, the parishioners decided to launch continual duty at the temple.

A short time later, the priest of the Kiev Patriarchate appeared at the church, who behaved inadequately and tried to break into the temple. Afterwards, the activists began to walk around the village and threatened to force residents to sign up for the “Ukrainian church”.

Local authorities did not intervene in the conflict.

The UOJ is monitoring the developments.

As the UOJ reported, due to numerous cases of human rights violations and the threat of escalation of religious conflicts, the head of the UOC Representative Office to European International Organizations, Bishop Victor (Kotsaba) of Baryshevka, appealed to officials of the UN, OSCE, EU and other countries to influence the situation in Ukraine.

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