In Ternopil, a commercial residential development was discovered on church-owned land allocated to the OCU and the UGCC

A journalistic investigation has uncovered evidence of the large-scale use of land plots in Ternopil—which were transferred free of charge to the religious communities of the OCU and the UGCC for religious purposes—for the construction of commercial apartment buildings. According to the publication “Novyny Krainy, ” this involves the construction of more than 500 apartments on land that was originally intended for churches and religious centers.

The investigation revealed that the designated use of the plots had been changed to allow for residential development. In particular, on the grounds of the OCU parish of St. Job of Pochaiv, a 10-story building with 44 apartments was built in place of an educational center. Similar violations were documented on the plots of the parishes of St. John the Theologian and Saints Boris and Gleb, where residential complexes with hundreds of apartments were built in place of church facilities. Near the Cathedral of Saints Constantine and Helena, construction also began on a residential building, despite the fact that the land had been allocated for the diocesan administration and a seminary.

A similar practice was also discovered at sites associated with the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC). For example, near the Church of the Holy Trinity, the construction of a 10-story building with 168 apartments was approved, and part of the land intended for a rehabilitation center at the Church of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary was rezoned for residential use. The authors of the report emphasize that these actions were made possible by questionable decisions by the city council and the manipulation of urban planning documents.

As a reminder, we previously reported that a corruption scheme involving 10 million in budget funds allocated for the restoration of a Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church was uncovered in the Lviv region .