Chief Architect of Kyiv, head of the main Department of City Development and Architecture of the Kyiv City State Administration, Serhii Tselovalnyk stated that the construction of a new church on the foundation of the ancient Tithe Church is opposed not only by professional and scholarly circles but also by the head of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Moscow Patriarchate.
In an interview to Khreshchatyk newspaper about the possible construction on the ancient foundation, Mr.Tselovalnyk said, “One does not have to be a builder to understand that nothing will remain of the ancient foundation… By the way, His Beatitude Metropolitan Volodymyr of Kyiv and All Ukraine, with whom I had an honor to have an audience, gave his blessing not to build a church in this place.”
Let us remind the readers that the director of the Institute of Archeology of the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Peter Tolochko, has recently voiced the opinion of Patriarch Kirill on the construction of the new Tithe Church, “I spoke to Patriarch Kirill and asked him about his opinion on this renewal. The patriarch answered, 'If we do not know exactly what it looked like, it is not advisable to renew it because it will be a pulp and not a monument.'”
At the same time, the leadership of the Tithe Monastery of UOC-MP continues to lobby the renewal of the Tithe Church in the state bodies. In particular, the president’s representative in the Parliament, Yurii Miroshnychenko, initiated such a bill.