Cherkasy bishop: Not even bandits but police seized St. Andrew’s Church
When government officials drive believers out of their churches, it means the state is waging war against its own Church, said Metropolitan Theodosiy.
On May 6, 2025, St. Andrew’s Church of the UOC in Cherkasy was seized with the involvement of government representatives and police. In his official statement, Metropolitan Theodosiy of Cherkasy and Kaniv said that the clergy and parishioners tried to defend the shrine peacefully and legally but were denied their rights. Law enforcement officers simply pushed them out of their own temple.
“We did everything we could,” he said. “We spoke at length with the mayor of Cherkasy, Anatoliy Bondarenko, and with the city council secretary, Yuriy Trenkyn. We explained that, by law, they could not take this church from us. We had lawyers with us and all the necessary documents…”
The clergy proposed resolving the dispute legally, through the courts, but were directly refused.
“We were simply pushed out of the church. The head of the Cherkasy police even forbade us from entering the sanctuary. The church is now being guarded by police officers who are following a criminal order, violating both the Constitution and the Law on the National Police,” the hierarch stated.
He recalled that when the cathedral was previously seized, it was done by “outright thugs – with stakes, pepper spray, and weapons.” “Today, there’s no crowd – only police. But it was they who pushed the believers out of the church and are now preventing them from going in. These are state officials. We are not going to fight them, but when it is the authorities themselves who drive out the faithful, it shows that the state is waging war against its own Church,” Metropolitan Theodosiy concluded.
He noted that the faithful managed to take out some sacred items: “We reverently carried out the antimins and the reliquary containing the relics of the Holy Great Martyr and Healer Panteleimon, which had been temporarily kept at St. Andrew’s Church. People cried, prayed, and said goodbye to the church, standing in front of the gates locked by the police.”
According to him, this is not just a local conflict: “Yes, we are not complaining. The whole country is suffering. But we believe that the day will come when the rule of law will return to Ukraine, and the faithful will again open the doors of their churches.”
As the UOJ reported, although St. Andrew's Church legally belongs to the Cherkasy Eparchy of the UOC, the authorities assigned a fake non-existent OCU community to it and fraudulently transferred the church to the Dumenko structure.
