Kiev, May 25, 2020
Photo: spzh.news
A church building in the Chernigov Province has been returned to the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church under His Beatitude Metropolitan Onuphry of Kiev and All Ukraine by order of the court of cassation of the Ukrainian Supreme Court.
The village council of Kovpit illegally transferred the Church of the Holy Protection to the schismatic “Orthodox Church of Ukraine” last year, whose “clergy” and supporters are now intimidating and harassing the faithful of the canonical UOC to prevent the church’s return to the Ukrainian Church, reports the Information-Education Department of the UOC.
On February 11, 2003, the Kovpit village council transferred the church to the UOC community for free use, but in February 2019, it decided to cancel its own order after supporters of the OCU began to apply for the church. As is often the case in such incidents, the members of the Holy Protection community were not present at the illegal meeting, Archpriest Igor Pidan, the Secretary of the Chernigov Diocese of the canonical Church explained.
In July, the religious community of the UOC appealed to the economic court of the Chernigov Province with a claim for the village council to cancel its February decision given that the 2003 decision is a non-normative act of one-time use, fulfilled since the transfer of the premises from February 28, 2003. Therefore, this decision cannot be canceled by the defendant 16 years after its adoption.
The economic court granted the UOC’s claim in September, noting that the village council broke a number of Ukrainian laws by transferring the church. The OCU supporters did not want to let the matter drop, but the village council did not want to continue in the matter, and the decision of the economic court was upheld. Then they filed a court of cassation complaint, which the court also did not satisfy.
“The decision comes into force from the moment of its adoption, is final and is not subject to appeal,” reads the court’s document dated May 14, 2020.
However, the OCU supporters have no intention of complying with the court’s order and have launched campaign to intimidate the faithful of the UOC with the help of nationalist radicals, threatening to burn them and slandering them as Russian agents.
The canonical community intends to apply to the state executive service to implement the decision of the court of cassation, which is final and not subject to appeal.
