Representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine have snubbed the judgment recently passed by the Supreme Court, which upheld the claims of the Ivano-Frankivsk City Executive Committee and ordered the Ivano-Frankivsk diocese of the ROCinU to vacate the premises at 6 Chornovola Street (Ivano-Frankivsk) and hand the site over to the City Council’s Education and Science Department.
It should be recalled that the premises of the Ivano-Frankivsk diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine (the so-called UOC-MP) on 6 and 6B Chornovola St. belonged to the education department of the Ivano-Frankivsk City Executive Committee. In two one-story buildings with a total area of 300 square meters, a kindergarten used to be located with a capacity of nearly 100 children.
“Currently, believers with the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (ROCinU – ed.) are forced to take everything from the church where they have been praying for 30 years, while the community has no other place for worship,” the ROCinU website claims.
In the afternoon of Friday, February 4, representatives of the ROCinU received an eviction notice, being told to vacate the premises by the morning of February 7.
In 2006, the executive committee of the City Council leased two non-residential buildings with a total area of 300 square meters to the diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine to be used as a house of prayer and office of the diocesan administration (until the construction of their church on 2 Dovzhenko Street is completed). The said construction was completed back in 2009, but the so-called ROCinU never vacated the premises anyway.
