In vlg. Bobly, OCU members cut down church locks and beat believers

Confrontation in the church of the UOC in the village of Bobly. Photo: a video screen

On Sunday, August 11, 2019, representatives of the Orthodox Church, under singing "prayers" of their "priests", illegally entered the Holy Protection Church in the village of Bobly of the Turiisk district, Volyn region, and made a fight directly in the church, reports the UOC Information and Education Department.

According to Archpriest Vitaly Duda, the Dean of the Turiisk Deanery of the Vladimir-Volynsky Epacrhy, the representatives of the Orthodox Church knew that the rector was serving in another church that day and the Holy Protection Church was closed.

"Three ‘priests’ of the OCU cut the lock on the first doors," said the archpriest. “They also brought strangers with them, one of whom was in a uniform, and began to break open the second door, which, by the way, is about two hundred years old.” They tried to open the lock with master keys, and, unable to cope, simply broke up the lock with a crowbar. Then they entered and closed inside."

Despite the previous agreements not to set any provocations, the raiders turned a deaf ear to the calls of the head of the UOC community to come to their senses and stop committing a sin and only continued to break down the temple doors, while OCU “priests” kept singing “prayers” with the words “Don’t bother!”.

When UOC believers began to gather in the seized church, provocateurs started a fight right in the temple.

“The crowd pushed us back against the wall and twisted our arms. If we were a little weaker, they could have broken our arms,” said the parishioners suffered.

“Our believers prayed continuously until noon on the threshold of their temple,” added the dean. “And when I arrived at the scene after the service, I saw this situation. I spoke with the police and local authorities so that there would be no confrontation and a conflict situation, and we agreed that the representatives of the "OCU" would leave the church. The chairman of the village council, who supports the newly formed structure, had to persuade them. In the end, they came out, and two locks – ours and theirs – were put on the temple doors.”

As a result of the provocation, the UOC believers wrote a statement to the police on the fact of illegal entry into the church building and deliberate bodily harm.

We recall that this is not the first provocation on the part of the OCU representatives in Bobly. At the beginning of spring this year, the UOC community was illegally re-registered to the OCU. At the same time, as Archpriest Vladimir Matsuri, press secretary of the Vladimir-Volynsky Eparchy of the UOC, said, only 25 people voted for the transfer to the OCU, while 956 people live in the village and most of the true parishioners of the Holy Protection Church, decided to stay in the bosom of the canonical Church. On August 4, OCU activists attempted to take away the church, but parishioners defended the temple.

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