Church To Be Built For Orthodox Ukrainians In Romania

12.11.2002, 15:16

The Ukrainian Orthodox community in Southern Bukovyna, Romania, is going to have its own church. This announcement was made by Teofil Bauer, head of the regional administration of Chernivtsi, the neighboring Ukrainian region. Bauer said that building a church was a feasible and necessary task. This news was reported by the information agency InfoNews on 11 November 2002.

In addition, Bauer said that the Romanian community in Ukraine has all the conditions for a full cultural life, including Romanian schools and Ukrainian Orthodox churches of the Moscow Patriarchate where services are held in Romanian. Bauer said that the Romanian side, however, is procrastinating on creating the same conditions for Ukrainians in Romania, assuming that they can attend Romanian Orthodox churches. He said that the Ukrainian community can hardly be satisfied with such an approach, since services are held in the Romanian language. He also said that do not Ukrainians feel comfortable attending churches of the Russian Old Believers, who also live in the area, because of differences in rite. Therefore, he said, the Ukrainian community in Romania is in vital need of its own church. The Ukrainian Greek Catholics who reside in this part of Romania have a Greek Catholic vicariate in the region, which is subordinate to the Romanian Greek Catholic Church. Source: www.i-news.org