M.P. Orthodox/Catholic Disputes Affect Only 2 of 1533 Parishes

There are indeed disputes between members of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Moscow Patriarchate (UOC-MP) and members of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC) in western Ukraine's Lviv region: exactly two. This information was provided by Stepan Borutskyi, head of the Lviv Regional Administration's Committee on Religious Matters, when asked about the ongoing claims of Moscow Patriarch Alexis II that "there is a Greek-Catholic war ... against Orthodox believers in Ukraine," which Tass reported on June 4. (See RISU articles of May 16 and June 6 for further information.)

Borutskyi knows of 20 disagreements between different religious groups in villages in the Lviv region and 2 of these are between members of the UOC-MP and members of the UGCC. In the Lviv region there are 1533 UGCC communities, 806 communities of the various Orthodox jurisdictions and the total population of the area is 2,700,000. At the heart of these disputes is property. In 1991 religious freedom came along with Ukrainian independence, so church buildings which had been given to the Russian Orthodox Church in Soviet times began to change ownership. The previously illegal and underground Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church revived and its newly legalized members wanted to worship in the buildings which their ancestors had built.

All these disputed buildings had been Catholic churches before the arrival of the Soviet army, since in 1939 there were only 9 Orthodox parishes in all of western Ukraine's Galicia territory, which includes Lviv and the Ivano-Frankivsk and Ternopil regions. Another Orthodox jurisdiction, the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (UAOC), which had been active before World War II and then also banned, revived in independent Ukraine. To complicate the situation, a former Russian Orthodox clergyman, Filaret, left the now renamed Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Moscow Patriarchate to form a new jurisdiction, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Kyivan Patriarchate (UOC-KP). Three major Orthodox jurisdictions and the UGCC were now legal entities. And all these communities needed a place to worship. In the early 1990s there were, consequently, a number of disputes centered around church buildings.

The idea of sharing the buildings and each congregation worshipping at its own scheduled time was proposed and in many villages this suggestion was accepted. But some congregations did not accept this solution and so the problems remained. Though things have quieted down in the past few years, Borutskyi sees only one lasting solution to these problems. "The most effective way to resolve these conflicts arising from property disputes is to build new churches and chapels." And this approach is being taken. Even in economically troubled Ukraine there is much church building going on. Borutskyi points out that, in these 20 places of potential conflict, the UGCC is building in 12 areas, the UAOC in 4, the UOC-KP in 3 and the local government itself is building in the village of Prylbychi, Yavoriv district. (It is worth noting that all three Orthodox jurisdictions are well represented in the Lviv region: UOC-KP -- 390 communities; UAOC -- 354 communities; UOC-MP -- 61 communities; and there is 1 independent community.) When asked about problems at a UOC-MP parish in Lviv's Sykhiv neighborhood which trouble Patriarch Alexis II, Borutskyi was amazed. His opinion is that no conflict exists there at all. Though the civil government does want the smaller UOC-MP community to register its chapel, parish life there continues. The faithful of both Orthodox communities are not hostile to each other. In fact, they freely attend services at both churches. Fathers Volodymyr Tsiulka and Volodymyr Kuzio, pastors of the UOC-KP and UOC-MP communities in Sykhiv respectively, previously worked together and know each other very well.