Odesa Eparchy shows how parishioners restored OCU-seized church from ruins

The Odesa Eparchy recalled that after the church was returned to the Church in the 2000s, it was in a state of abandonment and required enormous efforts to restore. The eparchy asked where the raiders who have now seized the church were when the site consisted of ruins and no one was willing to invest labor or resources into its revival.

All the work of restoring, rebuilding, and beautifying the shrine was carried out by the clergy and faithful of the canonical Church. As a spiritual admonition to their opponents, the diocese cited the words of Holy Scripture: “You shall not steal” (Exodus 20:15) and “Do not move an ancient boundary stone set up by your ancestors” (Proverbs 22:28).

At the same time, the diocese stressed that it is precisely property created through the prayers and hard work of others that repeatedly becomes the target of raiders. “You will know them by their fruits,” the Odesa Eparchy quoted from the Gospel, adding that genuine love for a church is demonstrated through a willingness to serve God and people, not by a desire to appropriate property built by others.

As previously reported by the UOJ, on June 23, 2026, a group of OCU supporters carried out a forcible seizure of St. Alexander Nevsky Church in Odesa. During the raid, unidentified individuals assaulted the secretary of the Odesa Eparchy of the UOC. OCU cleric Theodore Orobets stated that he intends to rename the seized church and expressed outrage over murals depicting saints, describing them as “markers of Moscow life.”