Bushcha: OCU activists block access to church house for UOC community

As it became known, on May 11, 2019, in the village of Bushcha of the Rovno region, the OCU activists barred the doors to the house where the St. Michael community of the UOC performs worship with a metal rail.

According to eyewitnesses, in the morning the UOC believers came to the territory of the church house to prepare everything for the Sunday service but couldn’t get inside the house because of the metal rail, which the OCU adherents had barred the door.

The church itself was taken away from the UOC community in February of this year. Since then, the believers have moved to pray at the church house, which is divided in half: in one part, by the goodwill of the religious community of the UOC, the priest of the OCU lives, in the other – to now, the UOC community has been worshiping.

“All this time, there has been no confessional peace in the village, the OCU community provokes, forces, threatens the UOC believers, who, remaining in the minority, are firm in their faith,” comments Archpriest Vasily Nacheva, a cleric of the Rovno Eparchy of the UOC. “The priest of the parish travels 120 kilometers to Bushcha to spiritually support the community, which remained faithful to the canonical Church. The OCU activists are not satisfied with the situation, they want to completely get rid of people who have not betrayed their faith.”

The UOC believers and the rector regularly receive threats from their fellow villagers, who demand to leave the village and not perform services. The religious community of the UOC defends its rights in the legal field.

The believers suppose that the OCU activists, being well aware of their wrongfulness, decided not to wait for the court decisions and continue to violate the law.

As the UOJ reported, earlier the head of the Zdolbunov DSA Sergey Kondrachuk broke the lock on the doors of the Holy Protection Church of the UOC, after which the PCU activists performed their “worship” there.