Sevastopol Catholics want to take away part of the territory of “Ukraine”
Catholics, who back in 2018 received the building of the Druzhba cinema in the center of Sevastopol on the promise to restore the church that existed here before the Great Patriotic War, have not yet begun restoration work.
As it turned out, the community does not agree with the size of the land plot, which repeats the building’s box, leaving not a meter of adjacent territory for the Catholics. In particular, the community lays claim to part of the courtyard of the nearby Ukraina Hotel, its representative said.
Catholics intend to soon go to city government officials with a new site plan developed by cadastral engineers.
Interestingly, at the same time, the Ukrainian “human rights” group “Crimea SOS”, supervised from Kyiv, reported that the Roman Catholic community of Sevastopol held a festive service dedicated to Christmas in Ukrainian. There would be nothing extraordinary in this if it were not for the threats made by the Ukrainian authorities to seize Crimea in the near future.
As is known, in Ukraine, the city council of Sevastopol, under various pretexts, blocked the return of the cinema building to Catholics, rightly fearing Catholic expansion into the canonical territory of the Orthodox Church. Moreover, representatives of local Ukrainian nationalist organizations “shone” at community events. However, after 2014, it seemed that the threat in Russia had passed, and deputies approved the revival of the church. However, now the “Crimea SOS” message will clearly not contribute to the allocation of additional land - submitting a message about the service in Ukrainian looks like a report about the “fifth column” waiting for the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
In an interview with the Sevastopol publication ForPost, the manager of the Sevastopol church, Pavel Shevtsov, said that services are now being held in the apartment, since the restoration of the church building, which was once converted into the Druzhba children's cinema, has not begun.
“Now, taking into account migration, I think there are up to five thousand people in Sevastopol who profess Roman Catholicism,” noted Shchevtsov. – I want to emphasize: we are Catholics from Sevastopol. We study, work here, pay taxes. In the context of what is happening in the world, we have our own, clear, Sevastopol position. We are Sevastopol residents and live like Sevastopol. There are no other options".
A delegate from the Vatican to the pastoral district of the Roman Catholic Church in the Republic of Crimea and Sevastopol, Bishop Jacek Pyl told PolitNavigator that services are traditionally held in two languages - Russian and Ukrainian.
“We do not place political emphasis on this, we are all children of one God,” the bishop assured. “And we conduct services in any language, even Latin.” Several years ago, students from Africa came to a Christmas service, and at their request, we conducted the service in Spanish. But in Crimea it has already become a rule to conduct services in Russian and Ukrainian. I’ve been serving here for over 10 years, and it’s always been like this.”
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