Seized church of UOC in Verkhovyna declared property of village council

On March 9, two days after the seizure of the Anna-Zachatievsky Church (St. Anne’s Conception Church) of the UOC in the village of Verkhovyna, Ivano-Frankivsk region, armed people came to the church and demanded that the temple be reregistered to the village council, reports the Chernivtsi-Bukovyna Eparchy on its Facebook page.

Masked men with machine guns drove the parishioners of the temple out of the administrative building, without letting them get dressed, forced them to line up and began to rewrite the names of believers, threatening to send them to the border with Russia. Then the armed men demanded that the headman of the community transfer the temple to the property of the village council.

The Chernivtsi-Bukovina Eparchy noted that the video shows the territorial defence forces of the Verkhovyna region.

“The first Lent week services are not performed in the churches of the UOC. People are afraid to go to the temple because they may not come back. Everyone is praying at home, in private,” reports the eparchy.

As the UOJ wrote, the authorities of the Ivano-Frankivsk region take away churches from UOC believers and then call on them to join the OCU.