Prayer standing in Lutsk: in front of RSA and behind the scenes

Prayer standing of UOC believers in Lutsk

On February 28, 2019, the clergy, ruling bishops, monastics, Orthodox sisters of mercy and numerous believers, who left their business on a weekday and came to join the prayer standing under the walls of the Volyn Regional State Administration, gathered in Kiev Square of Lutsk in support of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, reports a UOJ correspondent.

The purpose of the meeting was to demonstrate the unity of parishioners and clergy in a difficult period when the Church had to protect itself and the rights of its believers, and religious communities – legal entities – to defend their property from raiders.

The previous prayer standing in Lutsk was gathered on May 18, 2017, when laymen and clergy thus tried to draw public attention to the possible dangerous consequences of anti-church bills 4128 and 4511. Today, when their adoption gave a start to officially propagated community transfers, people again gathered from all the deaneries of the two Volyn eparchies to express their demands to the authorities and law enforcement agencies.

Seizures of Orthodox churches are being organized in the region in favor of the new religious structure – the OCU. Although the raider wave rose at the end of December 2018, it was only today, February 28, that the first statute was announced to be registered in favor of the OCU, not the UOC KP, as it had been done before. A new community appeared in the village of Zhidychin, Kivertsi district, where raiders beat two women during the takeover.

Today, more than 50 parishes of the Volyn Eparchy have been the targets of raider attacks. So far, many of the parishes have gone through only the preparatory stage of “a community gathering”. Quite a few temples have already been opened and seized, in others, they have just announced a “transfer”. The most active raiders showed in Gorokhov and Lutsk districts.

The raider wave was less active in the Vladimir-Volynsky Eparchy, but in the Ivanichi and Vladimir-Volynsky districts representatives of the Kiev Patriarchate / OCU also claimed quite a few churches their own.

More than 500 representatives of the regional clergy, who resisted, with few exceptions, the persuasion to move into a new church structure, prayed that day along with parishioners near the monument to the Fighters for the Independence of Ukraine.

In addition to representatives of law enforcement agencies, there were some members of various nationalist formations, whose role in what is happening remained unclear. However, it is not only they who were preparing for the day of prayer: the night before someone had “prudently” covered the area around the monument with a substance similar to table salt. The meaning of the salt-sowing ritual also remains unknown.

The traditional "highlight" in the actions of the UOC opponents was a picket of several senior citizens, who were handed pre-printed colorful placards with the text "Putin – Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church." While in the square, believers and priests prayed to God and kept the banners with the image of Christ, the picketers obviously showed their preferences.

Without waiting for the coming out of the heads of the RSA and the regional council, representatives of the UOC handed an appeal to the authorities, which voiced the main demands to those who may affect unhealthy tendencies in religious relations in the region.

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