MinCult offers to define fate of the temple in Ptichya by voting

According to the UOJ corrrespondent, at the meeting on the conflict in the village of Ptichya, Dubno district, Rovno region, representatives of the 
Kyiv Patriarchate tried to convince officials that there is no community of the UOC in the village.

The main purpose of the meeting in the Rovno Regional State Administration was a discussion on the topic of inter-confessional conflicts and ways to resolve them. Several representatives of the UOC and UOC-KP, police, regional authorities and the Security Service took part in the dialogue.

After the speech of Igor Zagrebelny, dean of Dubno deanery of the Kyiv Patriarchate, the vector of conversation turned into an offensive campaign against the UOC.

"Igor Zagrebelny had been preparing for the visiting session for a week before: I understood this during his speech," said Protopriest Grigory Stadnik, rector of the Holy Dormition Church in Ptichya. “The whole village collected signatures, and I could not understand why the KP representatives were doing it right now? When I heard the figure voiced by Mr. Zagrebelny and felt real pressure from the part of those present – everything fell into its place."

During the speech Igor Zagrebelny hinted that in the village of Ptichya 600 residents are parishioners of the Kyiv Patriarchate. He reported that the believers of the UOC in the village are very few. At the same time, many villagers report that people from the neighboring village of Turkovichi signed for membership in the UOC-KP.

"Supporters of the Kyiv Patriarchate accused us of involving outsiders in the conflict," Protopriest Viktor Zemlyanoi, head of the Department for Interfaith Regulation at Rovno eparchy of the UOC, comments on the situation. "As you can see, the signatures which were collected in the neighboring village indicate the opposite."

Local residents of Ptichya told the correspondent of the UOJ that, like four years ago, supporters of the Kyiv Patriarchate recorded in their ranks the people who were born in the village, but have not lived there for a long time.

"More or less real statistics could be seen at Easter," Irina, the UOC believer, said to the UOJ. "I counted the baskets of both communities." The religious community of the UOC – 160 baskets, while the UOC-KP – 140 ones".

"The question about the number of believers of the UOC in the village of Ptichya was addressed to me by Andrey Yurash, the director of the Department for Religious Affairs, and asked me to indicate their exact number," said Protopriest Gregory Stadnik. “Of course, I had to answer him as diplomatically as possible, that the UOC does not maintain a fixed membership of its parishioners, unlike other faiths. So, if someone is interested in the number of believers in the UOC in the village entrusted to me, I invite you to visit the nearest divine service and make sure that our religious community is large and is on a par in terms of the number of parishioners (not random visitors) with the Kyiv Patriarchate."

Yurash himself said that if any of the sides refused from the practice of alternating use of the temple, experts recommended that the priests and authorities in the near future organize a survey of Orthodox believers in the village of Ptichya. In this case, the temple should be handed over for worship to the community where the number of believers prevails.

On April 2 the court ruled that the Holy Dormition temple in Ptichya belongs to the UOC community. On the same day the church was occupied by the proponents of the Kyiv Patriarchate. On April 3 the temple was sealed again.