UOC church built by Ukraine's second president to be transferred to OCU

The church of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in honor of the Holy Great Martyr Paraskeva in the village of Chaikino, Chernihiv region, built at the expense of the second president of Ukraine Leonid Kuchma, is to be transferred to the OCU. According to the head of the Novgorod-Siverskaya territorial community, which includes the village of Chaikino, the church is allegedly “ownerless” today, and the idea of transferring the religious building to the OCU was personally expressed by Leonid Kuchma. This is reported by Suspilne.Chernihiv.

“Now we are talking about the Tchaikin Church to transfer it (to the OCU – ed.). In fact, it now has the status of ownerless, it has not been transferred to anyone. It was Leonid Kuchma, the second president of Ukraine, who built it in honor of his mother, St. Paraskeva. It was last summer (2024 – ed.). He said, “I would like to leave a good memory of myself, you know, like this. And now we have already started the procedure for recognizing it as ownerless, and then the community will decide who to transfer it to. The procedure takes a year, it is legally correct to do so,” – said Liudmyla Tkachenko, head of the Novhorod-Siverska community.

It is worth noting that the church in honor of the Great Martyr Paraskeva in the village of Chaikyne was built and consecrated in 2001 by the Primate of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, His Beatitude Metropolitan Volodymyr (Sabodan) of Kyiv and All Ukraine. At the same time, in 2001, the religious organization “COMMUNITY OF UKRAINIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH OF THE PARISH OF P. Piatnytsia of CHAIKYNO” was registered, which used the church for 24 years. Therefore, Ms. Tkachenko’s claims that the church does not belong to anyone are not true.