Moscow, February 13, 2017
Photo: The site of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church
On February 11, schismatics of the “Kiev Patriarchate,” with the support of “Right Sector” radicals seized a canonical parish of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) in the village of Kotyuzhyny, in the Ternopil region.
The site of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church’s Information-Educational Synodal Department reports that the takeover of the Church of Protomartyr Stephen went “according to the standard scheme.”
Photo: The site of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church
“Right Sector of Ternopil” radicals arrived early in the day, supposedly to keep order, but at a general meeting of the village they went on a rampage, intimidating believers of the canonical Church, demanding they give up the right to pray in their own church which legally becomes to the community.
However, as the radicals wrote on their Facebook pages, they were unable to scare everyone in the village into giving up their spiritual home and handing it over to uncanonical schismatics. “It’s a pity that most of these pensioners didn’t heed their children who voted for the Ukrainian Church,” one of the “Right Sector” activists wrote, referring to the movement to have one united autocephalous Ukrainian Church under the “Kiev Patriarchate.”
