In Volyn, UOC believers prevented "transfer" of church to OCU by majority vote

on February 21, a local community meeting was held in the village of Smolyhiv, Lutsk district, Volyn region, to discuss the transfer of St. Nicholas Church from the Ukrainian Orthodox Church to the OCU. The event was held at the Culture Center in an extremely tense atmosphere, accompanied by heated discussions, disputes and the presence of law enforcement agencies. Despite public and administrative pressure, the UOC believers managed to take part in the meeting and defend their church by open vote. This was reported by the regional publication Volynski Novyny.

St. Nicholas Church of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Smolyhiv is an architectural monument of national importance, built in 1743. It belongs to the archaic type of wooden Volyn churches with a three-story plan.

The meeting began with a joint prayer and a proposal to observe a minute of silence for the fallen Ukrainian soldiers. A chairman, secretary, and counting commission were elected. Immediately after the event began, supporters of the OCU realized that they would not be able to get the necessary two-thirds of the votes to take the church under their jurisdiction.

The obvious numerical advantage of the participants in favor of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church provoked aggression among the OCU supporters. The initiators of the raider scheme criticized the rector of St. Nicholas Church of the UOC for «actively agitating» the faithful of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in the village of Smolyhiv to participate in the meeting.

As a result, the vote on changing the canonical jurisdiction of the local St. Nicholas parish and the UOC church took an unexpected turn: the number of residents of Smolyhiv who wanted to join the OCU was much smaller than those who remained loyal to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

After the failure of such a plan, supporters of the OCU have already announced that they will organize new «meetings» to which, most likely, UOC believers — parishioners of St. Nicholas Church — will not be invited, so as not to «spoil» the implementation of their raider plan by the adherents of the Ukrainian schism again.

Earlier we reported that in the city of Korsun-Shevchenkivsky, Cherkasy region, the Church of the Savior of the Unmanufactured, which previously belonged to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) and is now under the control of supporters of the OCU, was turned into a clothing warehouse.