Chernivtsi MPs don’t listen to believer asking them not to close temple

Chernivtsi mayor Roman Klitschuk interrupting a speech by a UOC believer at a City Council session. Photo: a video screenshot on the Telegram channel of the Chernivtsi-Bukovyna Eparchy of the UOC.

At a session of the Chernivtsi City Council on May 25, 2023, the city councillors and mayor Roman Klitschuk did not want to hear the speech of Tetiana Kashevko, a believer, who urged the city authorities not to close the Romanian-language Three Saints parish (UOC), reports the press service of the Chernivtsi-Bukovyna Eparchy (UOC).

Participants in the session interrupted the woman, shouted, stomped their feet and finally cut off her microphone.

As reported, on 26 May 2023, the Chernivtsy authorities plan to conduct an inventory of the property of the Three Saints parish, seal the shrine where the community prays, and transfer it to the city cemetery. Such measures were taken in response to the refusal of the believers to convert to the OCU.

Tetiana Kashevko noted that when the Church of the Three Saints was opened after the Soviet period, "no commissions came there, everything was fine, but when the church was restored from the outside and painted inside, they want to take it away, creating various commissions”.

She stressed that most of the parishioners of the church are Romanians, and the service is in Romanian.

"Is this how we want to 'thank' our neighbours, who have provided us with hundreds of thousands of tonnes of humanitarian aid, hosting our refugees?" she asked the MPs.

On the mayor’s request, Tetiana's microphone was switched off when she tried to read out an appeal from the Romanian community to the Chernivtsi City Council, in which ethnic Romanians expressed concern about the authorities' intention to destroy their parish.

Earlier, Chernivtsi mayor Roman Klitschuk said that the City Council may allocate the land plots it seized from UOC parishes and set up recreational areas or car parks there.

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