Zaporozhye, Ukraine, January 18, 2021
Photo: spzh.news
Another cleric of the Zaporozhye Diocese of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church was attacked with a knife on Saturday night following the All-Night Vigil.
“Following the All-Night Vigil, there was attempt to attack our deacon Fr. George Cherpakov. He was walking with is matushka and his child in the same area as Fr. Vladimir Gumenyuk. Fr. George was in his cassock. The attacker also tried to cut him with a knife, but glory to God, everything worked out and they got off with just a fright. The police were called and wrote a report,” writes Archpriest Gennady Elin, the head of the Zaporozhye Diocese chancery.
Archpriest Vladimir Gumenyuk was stabbed in the head on January 12 while out in plain clothes. He went to the hospital, where he underwent surgery to remove a hematoma.
Archpriest Vladimir Ovcharenko, the press secretary of the Zaporozhye Diocese commented that “It looks like a series [of attacks]; how I would like to be wrong. A list of countries where its most difficult to be a Christian was recently published. Ukraine was not on it. Yet.”
After the attack on Fr. Vladimir, His Eminence Metropolitan Luke of Zaporozhye wrote:
Any parishioner of our Church or any resident of our city could be in his place tomorrow. It could also be a warning to both the ruling bishop and the clergy of our diocese. But to those who directed this man to do such a thing, we note that the entire history of the Church’s earthly existence testifies that neither Herod, nor Diocletian, nor Stalin, nor Hitler, nor others like them, could do anything with the Church. It stands and affirms the word of Truth, so even now it is possible to kill our body, but not our soul! The Church stood, stands, and will stand! And all its spiteful opponents will fall into oblivion!
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