Svoboda politician urges to seize temples from UOC and expel His Beatitude

Igor Miroshnichenko in front of the Statue of Liberty. Photo: politician's FB page

The temples of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church should be "once and for all deported from Ukraine" together with the priests and His Beatitude Metropolitan Onuphry, said Igor Miroshnichenko, the former deputy of the Verkhovna Rada from the Svoboda All-Ukrainian Association.

The politician, during a broadcast on his Facebook page, called for the expulsion of representatives of the canonical Church from Ukraine. The broadcast was conducted on the territory of the St. Panteleimon Convent of the UOC in Feofaniya.

Ukrainian churches should be taken away and "returned to the bosom of the mother church," Miroshnichenko said. However, he did not specify what he means by the name "mother church". Often, in relation to Ukrainian Orthodoxy, politicians call the Patriarchate of Constantinople this way.

Miroshnichenko called the owners of the monastery "bastards" and accused them of illegal construction. He showed the building, which was being built on the original monastery territory, and said that it was being erected “on the lands of the natural reserve fund”. The politician did not provide any evidence for his words.

Earlier, some news resources pulished the information that the UOC was trying to seize the land of the Feofania park. However, the management of the reserve emphasized that the territory, which recently began to be fenced, had long belonged to the monastery of the UOC.

“This territory, which is fenced off, belongs to the monastery and belonged long before the establishment of the institute,” said Mykola Yurchuk, deputy director of the state institution “Institute of Evolutionary Ecology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine”. “For 10 years, maybe even more ... According to the cadastral map, it also belongs to the monastery.”

As reported by the UOJ, the SBU General called to "cleanse" the monasteries of the UOC. 

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