OCU activist: We won’t allow UOC, a hotbed of evil, to be in Mikhalcha

OCU activist from Mikhalcha complained about the Church Slavonic language of worship and called the UOC believers "dumb-headed." Photo: a video screen

“They do not have documentation, they are liquidated as a parish, as a faith, as a patriarchate,” “Klymenko Time” cites the words of an OCU activist in the village of Mikhalcha of the Storozhynets district, Chernivtsi region, where the religious community of the canonical Church, illegally re-registered to the OCU, has been standing up for their right to freely practice the Orthodox faith since February 10, 2019.

We recall that the Holy Assumption Church in Mikhalcha, awaiting a court decision, is closed, and both believers of the UOC and representatives of the OCU guard its territory around the clock. Moreover, the latter claim that they will not allow the Ukrainian Orthodox Church to be present in the village at all.

“They say that we are heretics, but we have the Tomos, we have permission from the Ecumenical Patriarchate to serve,” said one of the representatives of the OCU community in Mikhalcha. “We have everything, but they have nothing.” <...> They do not have documentation, they are liquidated as a parish, as a faith, as a patriarchate. They used to be the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate, and now they have removed the MP, dropped it, and in these details the evil is hidden. <...> They have already lost everything, we have privatized the land, the church is ours, i.e. the OCU ".

According to the “believer”, last February, Mikhalcha residents “with passports unanimously voted to expel the Moscow priest and take the church over, to use the Ukrainian language”, since the clergy of the UOC “serve in the Old Slavonic language, which nobody understands". Now, he said, "everything is in Ukrainian – and psalms we sing, everything is as clear as God's day with the sun."

“We don’t want to share the church with them, we don’t want this Moscow Patriarchate to build their church here. This is a hotbed of evil, this is the root of evil, this is the aggressor state, this is the evil empire... Now we don’t want the Russian Church in the village at all, because it will be the root of evil, a hotbed of all dirty tricks, ”emphasized the man who openly calls the believers of the canonical Church “dumb-headed” and “zombied”.

As reported earlier, since February 10, 2019, the religious community of the UOC of the village of Mikhalcha has been praying for peace in Bukovina and the right to freely practice the Orthodox faith. The community was illegally re-registered to the OCU against its will, and supporters of the newly formed structure make regular raider attacks on the Assumption Church. During their last attempt to seize the temple, activists knocked out the church door with a makeshift battering-ram. On December 23, 2019, the Mikhalcha village council supported the transfer of land under the UOC church to the OCU.

On January 23, 2019, the Primate of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church met with Mikhalcha parishioners of the UOC. His Beatitude Onuphry noted the courage and steadfastness of the believers who, over the course of the year, have been protecting their church from the encroachments of OCU supporters, and wished the speedy establishment of peace in the village.

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