Rector: Visiting radicals want to seize the temple in Semipolky
In the Kyiv region, nationalists are targeting another shrine, which can be taken away from the UOC parishioners because of their praying “in Russian”.
On January 15, 2022, a meeting of the local community will be held in the village of Semipolky, Brovary district, Kyiv region, at which local residents will discuss the issue of transferring the Holy Trinity Church to the jurisdiction of the OCU.
As the rector of the temple, Archpriest Mykolai Lesko, told the UOJ, the reason for such a sudden desire to seize the church was the recent funeral service for a deceased soldier of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, performed “in Russian”.
“On December 22, 2022, we buried Ihor Vasylenko, a soldier of the Armed Forces of Ukraine,” says the priest. “He died in Avdiyivka. Some were indignant that we served ‘in Russian’, although it was in Church Slavonic. However, it had to be done in Ukrainian, in their opinion. Then this dirt got disseminated in local publics."
Batiushka is agitated by the overly aggressive rhetoric of some local residents who do not want a parish of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church to exist in the village.
Even on New Year's Eve, a parish meeting was held in the church, at which its members testified their loyalty to the UOC and His Beatitude Metropolitan Onuphry.
Fr Mykolai noted that all the initiators of the seizure were visitors from the neighboring village of Rusaniv and had nothing to do with the community.
“We will stand, defend ourselves with all our strength,” the rector says. “I have already consulted with the members of our community, we will go to this meeting, we will listen to them. But if they raise the issue of transition, we will leave this action. If they want to form an OCU parish in the village, somewhere else, we do not mind, let them do what they want. But if the question of our parish arises, then it is out of question.”
As the UOJ reported, earlier, OCU supporters seized a temple in honor of the Archangel Michael of God and all the Bodiless Heavenly Forces in the village of Bilohorodka, Kyiv region.
