“We are coming to you, and this is the matter”: The family of a UOC MP priest is being expelled from Volyn
Dissenters from the “Kyiv Patriarchate,” unrecognized in the Orthodox world, are trying to drive a UOC-MP priest and his family out into the street in the village of Ugrinov in Volyn.
After the victory of Euromaidan in 2014, representatives of the “Kyiv patriarchy” held a so-called “referendum”, in which the majority of village residents allegedly spoke in favor of moving under the protectorate of the schismatics. Based on this, they selected the only Orthodox church in the village.
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The “Kiev Patriarchate” first set its sights on the temple. In 2014, thanks to local administrative resources, they managed to take the temple into their own property. Now they are trying through the court to take away the housing in which the priest Rostislav Sapozhnik lives with his family. This house for them is also a place where they pray, because they are not allowed into the church,” Oleg Tochinsky, a representative of the Volyn diocese of the UOC-MP, said on the air of “Civic Radio”.
Shoemaker himself assures that the schismatics held an illegal referendum, which has no force: “According to the charter of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, a referendum as such is not provided for. Then there was a referendum among the village community. A rural community and a religious community are two different things. Only the religious community has the right to decide whether to convert. I consider the attempt to take away the housing illegal. If there were no supporters of our Church in the village, there would be no reason for me to stay here. And there are such people. And they want to pray as they have done for 20 years. Why then should I move out of that house?”
However, the “fairest in the world” Lokachinsky District Court of the Volyn region spoke out against the priest, which ruled that as of July of this year, the Holy Cross Church and adjacent buildings, including the church house where Rostislav Sapozhnik lives, belong to the UOC-KP.
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