Khmelnytskyi court hands Letychiv UOC church to fictitious OCU community
The Khmelnytskyi Court of Appeal overturned the first-instance ruling and rejected the UOC rector’s lawsuit seeking access to the church and property that had been re-registered to the OCU.
The Khmelnytskyi Court of Appeal overturned the decision of the court of first instance and refused to satisfy the claim filed by the rector of the Dormition Church of the UOC in the urban-type settlement of Letychiv, Khmelnytskyi Region – effectively recognizing as lawful the re-registration of the church’s property to the OCU. This was reported on the official Facebook page of the Khmelnytskyi Court of Appeal.
The rector of the Dormition Church of the Letychiv deanery of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church stated that he represents the UOC religious community established in 1991, and he demanded that the decision of the state registrar changing the owner of the church, the guardhouse, and a service residential building be annulled, and that obstacles to the use of the property be removed.
The court found that in 2012 the UOC religious community was issued certificates of title to the church and auxiliary buildings. However, in May 2024, a state registrar entered changes into the register, listing an OCU religious organization as the owner of the property. The appellate court agreed with the defendant’s arguments about the community’s “transfer” to the OCU and did not examine the position of the actual parishioners.
The ruling states that the plaintiff failed to prove a violation of his rights as an individual. At the same time, the issue of depriving the UOC religious community of property belonging to it and transferring it to an OCU structure without the believers’ consent was, in effect, not examined by the court.
It is worth noting that as early as April 2023, parishioners of the Dormition Church in Letychiv (Khmelnytskyi Eparchy of the UOC) said the shrine had been seized by OCU representatives and appealed to ambassadors of European countries and to the EU Delegation in Ukraine. As the UOJ reported, the church’s “transfer” to the OCU was formalized through a vote by people who were not parishioners, conducted at the church gates without the participation of the UOC religious community.
Earlier, the UOJ reported that a court decided to hand the Holy Spirit Cathedral of the UOC in Chernivtsi over to the OCU.
