Bishops of 3 eparchies of UOC meet with the head of Vinnitsa RSA
Representatives of the local authorities promised to address those cases of violation of the rights and freedoms of believers, which the UOC hierarchs reported to them.
Metropolitan Agapit (Bevtsik) of Mogilev-Podolsky and Shargorod, Archbishop Varsonofy (Stoliar) of Vinnitsa and Bar and the vicar of the Tulchin Eparchy Bishop Sergiy (Anitsoy) of Ladyzhin met with the chairman of the Vinnitsa Regional State Administration Valery Koroviy and the head of the Department for Nationalities and Religions of the Vinnitsa RSA Igor Saletsky, reports the site of the Vinnitsa Eparchy of the UOC.
The meeting participants discussed the situation that has developed in the region in connection with the creation of the OCU. The bishops of the canonical Church told representatives of the local authorities about specific cases of violation of the legislation of Ukraine: the actions of Metropolitan Simeon (Shostatsky) banned from ministry for falling into schism and his clerics who unacceptably interfere in the life of UOC communities, aggression from OCU activists against believers and the clergy, and numerous cases of church raiding, in which representatives of local authorities took part.
The chairman of the RSA said that he was aware of cases of the unlawful seizure of temples of the canonical Church in the territory of Vinnitsa region. He stressed that he adheres to the constitutional principle of non-interference in the process of voluntary transition of UOC religious communities to the newly created OCU and promised to address those cases of violation of the rights and freedoms of believers, which he found out during the meeting.
The head of the Department for Nationalities and Religions of the Vinnitsa RSA Igor Saletsky advised the representatives of the Church to file lawsuits in court if unlawful actions against believers and property of the UOC continued to take place in the region.
The participants in the talk discussed solutions to a number of other important problems.
On January 4, 2019, the Coordination Council of canonical bishops of the UOC eparchies in the Vinnitsa region organized a cross procession to the buildings of the Vinnitsa Regional State Administration and the mayor’s Office of Vinnitsa in order to hand a formal appeal to the local authorities with a request to return the relationship between the Church and the government to the legal plane. The text of the appeal also contained an appeal to stop the pressure on the communities and assist in the return of the canonical Church’s property seized by supporters of the OCU.
