Metropolitan Theodosius Revealed the Plan Behind the Seizure of the Archangel Michael Cathedral in Cherkasy

Metropolitan Theodosius of Cherkasy and Kaniv has revealed details of a multi-pronged strategy that, according to him, city authorities and representatives of the OCU are using to legally secure their rights to the seized Archangel Michael Cathedral. The hierarch emphasized that all actions by the authorities are aimed at legalizing the forcible seizure of the cathedral through the courts.

According to the bishop’s statement, the process of expropriating the property involves three consecutive stages. The first step was the Ministry of Justice’s 2024 revocation of the property registration, which had been formalized for the diocese back in 2018 by the late Metropolitan Sofroniy. The second stage was the declaration of the cathedral as “ownerless” property, which, according to the metropolitan, is a gross manipulation that ignores the historical reality of the church’s construction by the Cherkasy Diocese of the UOC. The final step in this scheme is to transfer the building to municipal ownership or to the OCU through a commercial court.

Metropolitan Theodosius noted that the diocese continues to fight within the legal framework, despite the fact that the judge rejected the motions of more than 700 believers who participated in the cathedral’s construction to be included in the proceedings. The hierarch promised that all details of the legal proceedings would be widely publicized at both the national and international levels.

As a reminder, it was previously reported that in Cherkasy, a congregation of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church was evicted from a hospital chapel due to its refusal to join the OCU.