Chernivtsi, Chernivtsi Province, Ukraine, September 6, 2024
The last service officiated by priest Cristofor Gabor, on August 25, 2024, at the Cernăuți Metropolitan Chapel took place in the presence of the police. Photo: romania.europalibera.org
The National Council of Romanians in Ukraine, a civic union of 20 Romanian-language cultural societies and press institutions, is calling on Romanian authorities to protest the governmental seizure of a beloved Romanian memorial chapel in western Ukraine.
The Council also “requests urgency in the process of transferring Romanian Orthodox communities in Ukraine under the care of the Romanian Orthodox Church,” reports hotnews.ro.
On August 23, the administration of the Chernivtsi city cemetery cut the locks off the Three Holy Hierarchs Church and sealed the building, preventing the faithful from entering and praying there. Then the courts took the chapel away from the Romanian community that had owned it and rebuilt it since 1990 and gave it to the cemetery administration, which now intends to let the schismatic “Orthodox Church of Ukraine” serve there.
There are more than 120 ethnically Romanian parishes in western Ukraine. The Three Holy Hierarchs Chapel, which also serves as the tomb of seven Romanian Orthodox bishops from Bukovina, is the first to be seized by the authorities, causing an uproar.
The National Council of Romanians in Ukraine appealed to the Romanian President, Prime Minister, and Minister of Foreign Affairs, as well as His Beatitude Patriarch Daniel of Romania, to take a stand against the “theft of the Metropolitan Chapel by the Ukrainian authorities.”
The Romanian Church has long been concerned about the fate of Romanian churches in western Ukraine, which are in the jurisdiction of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Finally, in February of this year, the Romanian Synod resolved to establish its own structure in Ukraine, encouraging the ethnically Romanian parishes to join it (though Ukrainian authorities refused to register the structure because they expect the parishes to join the schismatic “Orthodox Church of Ukraine”).
After attacking the Romanian language, now they’re attacking their Churches, the Council explains:
After 30 years of strongly attacking Romanian-language schools, after constantly waving the “Moldovan language” flag, after marginalizing us in public administration representation, etc., now the authorities are coming to take our churches, to tell us when, to whom, and how we should pray. We have every reason to qualify the gesture of the Ukrainian authorities in dispossessing the Romanian community of this place of worship as an element of a new offensive against the Romanian minority in Ukraine, in disregard of the national legislation in force, the bilateral interstate framework, and the European and international framework on human rights.
Under these conditions, we respectfully ask you, as high representatives of the related state of Romania, to take a stand against the theft of the Metropolitan Chapel by the Ukrainian authorities, a gesture lacking in honesty and contrary to the spirit and letter of the Basic Treaty between Ukraine and Romania and other bilateral and multilateral legal instruments to which Ukraine is a party.
And to Pat. Daniel, the Council writes:
We request urgency in the process of transferring Romanian Orthodox communities in Ukraine under the care of the Romanian Orthodox Church.
The legality of the cemetery chapel’s ownership since 1990 was never questioned the Council writes:
Unfortunately, in the context of Church unrest, with a profound geopolitical substratum, the Orthodox churches of the Romanian community have also become victims. By decision of the Chernivtsi Local Council no. 1179 of April 27, 2023, adopted during the 32nd session of the 8th legislature, the previous decision, no. 141/6 of April 24, 1990, to transfer the Chapel of Bukovinian Metropolitans to St. Nicholas Church was annulled. After a series of judicial mazes, on August 23, 2024, the chapel was sealed by the city hall.
In a response to Radio Free Europe, a spokesperson for the Romanian Church says that it “has noted with regret and sadness that services in Romanian can no longer take place in the chapel of the Bukovinian metropolitans.”
“Although the Romanian clergy and faithful in the Chernivtsi Province aren’t members of the Romanian Orthodox Church, but belong to another Orthodox Church, we can’t remain indifferent to the confiscation by authorities, with various administrative justifications, of a Romanian identity symbol and to the violation of religious freedom of Romanian Orthodox Christians.”
The Romanian Church also said that it joins the Romanian organizations in asking Romanian authorities to discuss with their Ukrainian counterparts “so that Romanians are free to pray in their language and to come within the Romanian Orthodox Church if they wish to do so.”
At the same time, the canonical Ukrainian Church protested the Romanian Church’s establishment of a new structure in Ukraine.
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