Roman Catholic Community of Dnipropetrovsk Continues to Struggle for Cathedral of St. Joseph

The Roman Catholic community of Dnipropetrovsk resumed the prayer vigils in front of the city’s Cathedral of St. Joseph. The Roman Catholics fear a raider attack against the church as its registration by the Bureau of Technical Inventory is still blocked despite the fact that it was passed to the Roman Catholic community more than a year ago.  

Representatives of the community also learned that a lawsuit of the company Dugsbery, Inc. regarding the cathedral has been considered by one of the courts of the city of Donetsk for more than half a year now without notifying the parish. The next session of the Donetsk court will be held on October 8.

 “Taking into consideration the danger and direct threats by representatives of Dugsbery in the autumn of 2009, the Catholics cannot feel safe and use the constitutional right of Ukraine to freely perform religious practices in religious buildings,” state the community’s representatives. They have already sent an address to the head of the Dnipropetrovsk Regional State Administration and to the region’s Public Prosecutor. They are also gathering signatures for an address to the President of Ukraine.

RISU information:

The local Roman Catholics sought the return of the Cathedral of St. Joseph for fifteen years. The church was built by Roman Catholics in the second half of the 19th century. Under the Soviet regime, the cathedral was confiscated and was used for non-intended purposes.

At the time when Pavlo Lazarenko was the head of the Dnipropetrovsk Regional Council, the council secretly passed the cathedral to a Panama company, which then resold it to the American corporation Dugsbery, Inc.

On June 5, 2009, the Economic court of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast passed the church to the local parish of St. Joseph of the Roman Catholic Church. New obstacles, however, have arisen: the Bureau of Technical Inventory refuses to register the church building.