Kyiv's Roman Catholics have again demanded that the capital's authorities return the St. Nicholas Church to them

The Roman Catholic community of Kyiv has demanded that the city authorities return St. Nicholas Church to their ownership. The Catholics accuse the city council of not adhering to the agreements and memorandums reached a year earlier, in the context of which the Kyiv City Council undertook to transfer the said religious building for use by the religious community. This is reported by the “Kyiv Vlada” publication.

It is reported that a year has passed since the required 25 thousand signatures were collected ahead of schedule on January 13, 2024, under a petition to the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine to return the Church of St. Nicholas in Kyiv to the religious community of the Roman Catholic Church, but no action has been taken by the authorities. Despite the signatures collected under the petition and the memorandums signed, the issue of returning the church remains open, causing outrage among parishioners and the cultural community.

According to the parish of St. Nicholas Church, despite the failure to fulfill the 2021 memorandum and the 2023 supplemental agreement, which obliged the Ministry of Culture to return the church by May 1, 2024, the religious community sent letters to President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal, and Minister of Culture and Strategic Communications Mykola Tochytskyi.

“We ask you to hear the voice of justice and hope that you will be the one who will go down in history as the one who will finally put an end to the consequences of the Soviet regime in our country and complete the process of returning the church to the religious community. And together we will be able to say with pride that we did everything we could to save this monument for future generations. Let bureaucratic barriers not be an obstacle to the restoration of historical justice. Returning the church to its faithful is a just and good deed. Just and good deeds are steps towards the salvation of the soul. Therefore, we urge you to speed up the resolution of this issue and prove that the rights of citizens and cultural heritage in our country are not empty words,” – the letters to the officials say.

Earlier, we reported that the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine failed to fulfill its obligations to the Roman Catholic community of Kyiv regarding the transfer of St. Nicholas Church in the capital. Despite the fact that a Memorandum was signed between the Roman Catholic parish of St. Nicholas in Kyiv and the Ministry of Culture and Information Policy (now the Ministry of Culture and Strategic Communications), the Ministry has failed to fulfill its terms for the second time. This document obliged the Ministry of Culture and Information Policy of Ukraine to return the church to the Catholic community no later than June 1, 2022.