Lviv City Council promotes construction of OCU cathedral on site where UOC church was demolished

The construction of a cathedral of the Lviv-Sokal Diocese of the OCU has been announced in Lviv. The construction of a large-scale church complex is planned at 89 Chervona Kalynya Avenue, on the site where the St. Volodymyr’s Church of the UOC, which was previously demolished by the city authorities, was located.

According to the regional publication Sykhov.Media, plans to build the cathedral have been discussed for a long time. Back in 2021, the head of the OCU Epiphany Dumenko installed a cross at this place, which was the first step towards the implementation of the project. Yevhen Boyko, the administrator of the executive committee of the Lviv City Council, emphasized that this issue has been on the agenda for several years.

The construction will be funded by the community and the Lviv-Sokal Eparchy of the OCU. In the near future, it is planned to announce an architectural competition that will determine the final appearance of the future cathedral.

“The community there is quite active. They have long hoped that a modern Orthodox church will appear on this site, which will meet the needs of believers living in Sykhiv,” the publication quotes Yevhen Boyko as saying. Currently, a temporary church is functioning on the site, but in the future a full-fledged cathedral with administrative and social facilities will be built there.

The total area of the land plot exceeds 80 hectares, which, according to Yevhen Boyko, “is quite enough to build a church and adapted premises for social work.”

As reported, the Lviv Regional Council continues to purge the believers of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in the region. The regional authorities are concerned that despite the legal liquidation of religious communities of the UOC and the seizure of churches of the canonical Church, believers still gather for prayer in private homes in Lviv and other cities of the region. The Lviv Regional State Administration stated that the Security Service of Ukraine will be involved in the complete liquidation of the UOC “cells”.