As we reported earlier, on February 16, 2025, the so-called meeting of the territorial community, initiated by representatives and supporters of the OCU, took place in Chernivtsi. During the event, unidentified persons held a vote, as a result of which three city churches of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church were “transferred” to the OCU. Thus, the Holy Spirit Cathedral, St. Nicholas Cathedral and St. Peter and Paul Church of the Chernivtsi Diocese of the UOC fell under the raider scheme.
Three UOC churches re-registered to OCU in Chernivtsi
On February 26, 2025, the unknown state registrar re-registered the Holy Spirit, St. Nicholas and St. Peter and Paul communities of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church to the OCU. Yaroslav (Feognost) Bodoryak, the head of the Chernivtsi diocese of the OCU, was appointed as the head of these religious organizations. The communities were re-registered despite the fact that the UOC communities had previously held a meeting at which they voted to refuse to change their confessional affiliation. This is reported by the Telegram channel of the Chernivtsi-Bukovyna Diocese of the UOC.
“Today at 15:10, the three largest Orthodox shrines in Bukovyna were re-registered in the name of: Yaroslav Bodoryak, a resident of Ivano-Frankivsk region. Unidentified persons made changes to the Unified State Register and appointed Yaroslav Bodoryak as the new owner and new head of St. Nicholas Church of the UOC, the Holy Spirit Cathedral of the UOC and St. Peter and Paul Church of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church,” — the diocese reported.
In addition, the diocese pointed out that in the process of re-registration of the community of the Holy Spirit Cathedral of Chernivtsi, a spelling error was made. Instead of the word “parish”, the register reads “arish”.
“The falsifiers with Mr. Bodoryak are in such a hurry that they have the parish of the cathedral listed in the documents, according to the newly entered data, instead of the parish of the cathedral: ARISH of the Cathedral,” — the diocese noted.
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