Odessa eparchy: Former rector wants to take away UOC temple

St. Paraskeva Church in the village of Priozerne. Photo: ivasi.news

In the Odessa region, the defrocked former rector of the St. Paraskeva Church in the village of Priozerne, Mikhail Stegarescu, wants to take away the Orthodox church of the UOC and hand it over to the Bessarabian Metropolis of the Romanian Orthodox Church, reports Protodeacon Andrey Palchuk, a cleric of the Odessa Eparchy.

Michael Stegarescu, the former rector of the St. Paraskeva Church, having seized the documents of the temple, is trying to transfer the entire community under the influence of an unregistered religious organization, the so-called “Bessarabian Metropolis”, which is strongly supported by the Romanian state and church authorities.

“The former rector expressed a desire to voluntarily leave the UOC for the Romanian Church, but it did not work out there, he returned to the village and said that if the parishioners want him to serve here, they must go to the Romanian Church. The parishioners refused, but he did not stop, he began to stir up the whole village. Then it turned out that he was serving in the neighbouring village of Kamyshovka in the schismatic Bessarabian Metropolis. Now the ex-priest became a deputy and thought that he could do anything, declares that he will return soon. We are not afraid of him. A church is not just a building, it is people who go to this church,” said the current rector of the church in the village of Priozerne, Archpriest Maxim Lutsa, in an interview with Andrey Palchuk.

Как ранее сообщал СПЖ, Одесская епархия собрала погорельцам более 600 000 грн и 28 тонн гумпомощи.

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