Priests from Cyprus come to support the community in Kinakhovtsy

On July 25, 2017 the parish of Holy Apostles Peter and Paul of the UOC in Kinakhovtsy village, Zbarazh district, Ternopol region, was visited by the delegation of clergymen of Cyprus Church as well as Representation of Jerusalem Patriarchate on the Cyprus island.

The guests came round the elder’s house to support the community having withstood a split, despite the pressure from the authorities.

According to the UOC community priest Vitaly Gurev, he met the clergy in the village of Vishnevets, and on the way to Kinakhovtsy their arrival was recorded on video or photo by some outsiders who were waiting for them by the road. Who they are, the priest does not know. Perhaps the invaders of the Orthodox church in Kinakhovtsy were frightened to see that the parishioners of the UOC were preparing their prayer yard for the meeting, traditionally decorating it with flowers.

"People are very grateful to foreign guests who came to our small village to support us in a difficult moment. Many even cried, and everyone was very happy to see in fact the true unity of the Church, the same priests from autocephalous Orthodox Churches who recognize us and pray together with us," father Vitaly told the UOJ.

The priests from Cyprus communicated with people in Greek, and in the same language they sang a prayer. The guests made a gift for the UOC parishioners – a book about Jerusalem and icons, giving the faithful Ukrainians the warmest wishes of their clergy, who also experienced very severe persecutions throughout the history of the Church of Cyprus.

After the visit to Kinakhovtsy, on the way back, Father Vitaly showed the neighboring village of Butin to foreigners. The Orthodox parish was seized there in 2014. The canonical communities of the villages of Butin and Kinakhovtsy actually got united into one and are likely to share the future common temple together, since they had been praying in Kinakhovtsy church before the raiders from the UOC-KP grabbed it.