Publicist: A serial pedophile from Lviv is directly related to UGCC

Roman Moskovchenko, who is detained on suspicion of rape of minors. Photo: zaxid.net

A serial pedophile from Lviv, who presented himself as a spiritual preacher and who has raped minors since 2005, is directly related to the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. Orthodox publicist and blogger Alexander Voznesensky wrote about it following his own case sudy published on the CONT platform for social journalism on October 8, 2020.

Earlier, a number of media outlets published the news about the 46-year-old resident of Lviv, Roman Moskovchenko, who was detained on suspicion of raping 11 girls. As Voznesensky noted, the authors "tried to bypass the religious component of this story, citing only vague phrases."

For example, one of the largest Uniate sites RISU wrote the following about the detained pedophile: “The head of an officially unregistered youth society organized health and educational camps for children but did not have official permission to do so. Introducing himself as a believer in the Christian church, he went to schools and attracted children to participate in the youth organization he led. <...> He found an approach to priests and patrons and thus collected clothes, toys, sweets for charitable causes but used these things for his future victims."

“The reader is led to the idea that it was some kind of illegal organization led by a pedophile, but what kind of organization he belonged to was not specified,” the publicist noted. - <...> I will probably surprise you by saying that the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church is well aware of what kind of organization it is and what kind of person it is. Moreover, this organization is by no means underground but has been officially functioning for many years under the Uniate Church."

After analyzing a number of resources, including the catalog of parish organizations under the jurisdiction of the Lviv Archdiocese of the UGCC, Alexander Voznesensky established that we are talking about a specific youth organization "Children of Christ", founded back in 1986 at the Uniate monastery church of Archangel Michael in Lviv and operating under his patronage. He also pointed out that at the address of the organization "Children of Christ" there is a private Catholic school of St. Sophia, in which Moskovchenko worked since 2004, and on its official website it is noted that it is completely under the control of clerics and hierarchs of the UGCC.

“Hence, Moskovchenko was not some kind of swindler who misled people with the help of an underground organization – he was a man with Catholic theological education, deeply integrated into the sphere of Catholic education in Lviv and holding the position of head of a youth organization that worked within the monastery church in Lviv,” explained Alexander Voznesensky. “It is the work in Catholic organizations, on the one hand, that shows that this status made it possible to have close communication with children and commit crimes. On the other hand, this situation shows that he was an appointee of the church authorities, and the latter should be responsible for this appointment."

In his opinion, the leadership of the UGCC does not give any comments, "although this situation is directly related to them: it was a pedophile who worked at their school, and he headed their organization", because they are "unwilling to go down in history as a structure that gave the country a serial pedophile".

“We've all heard about the pedophilia scandals in the Catholic Church in Europe and the United States. Now representatives of the Catholic Church have brought these crimes to Ukraine as well,” summed up Alexander Voznesensky.

We will remind, earlier Pope Francis recognized the actions of the Roman Catholic Church in the fight against manifestations of pedophilia among priests as a failure.

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