Ivano-Frankivsk mayor: We will finish off the last UOC parish in the region
Ruslan Martsynkiv said that owing to his activities, only one UOC community remained in the Ivano-Frankivsk region, and promised to close it by the end of the year.
On July 24, 2022, the mayor of Ivano-Frankivsk Ruslan Martsynkiv shared his plans to get rid of the last community of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in the region this year and expressed the hope that after that the communities of the UOC will disappear in Ukraine altogether. This is reported by zahid.espreso.tv.
The mayor noted that there is only one UOC community in the region, but the city authorities re-registered it in favor of the OCU, but the priests of the canonical Church do not give up. Officials sued them for not allowing schismatics to serve in the church. “I think we will settle this matter, and the last parish of the Moscow Patriarchate in the Ivano-Frankivsk region will fall. We believe that Frankivsk can serve as a role model for all regions,” Martsinkiv said.
He added that it is impossible to simply “ban” the UOC by order of the city authorities, since “this decision is legally non-binding”, but one should work with the community instead. According to him, the authorities of Ivano-Frankivsk managed to convince the parishioners and the community moved to the OCU, but failed to convince the priests of the UOC.
“Therefore, we are doing our best to make sure that by the end of the year this last community will be transferred (to the OCU – Ed.),” the mayor announced his plans, adding that the community “de jure passed and the property belongs to the OCU community.” He is sure that the supporters of the UOC "will still try to put a spoke in the wheel", but it’s not worth paying attention to that.
“I just want to do everything in a civilized, constitutional and legal way,” Martsinkiv stressed.
As the UOJ wrote, the community of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Ivano-Frankivsk appealed to the President of Ukraine with a demand to stop the mayor’s arbitrariness.
