
Archbishop Sergei Gensitsky of Ternopol and Kremenets (1951- ), the ruling bishop of Musorovtsy. Pray that God preserve him in the face of schismatical and Uniate attacks.
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On the very eve of Christmas, for the third time, supporters of the self-proclaimed “Patriarchate of Kiev” attempted to seize Protection church in the village of Musorovtsy in Ternopol oblast. “On 3 January, a provocation occurred. A ‘priest’ of the ‘Patriarchate of Kiev’, Svyatoslav Shvets, led a mob of young nationalist thugs”, the press service of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC/MP) told our Interfax-Religion correspondent on Tuesday. At the end of liturgy, about 100 youths began to beat on the doors of the church with a hammer and chisel in the presence of the police and representatives of the village council. They broke open the bolt and lock on the door, but weren’t able to enter the church. The intruders tried to enter through a side door using an axe and a five-metre-long (@16 feet) wooden plank. “They beat the priest, servers, and parishioners defending the church with the plank, benches, and boards. However, the defenders beat back the attackers and miraculously protected the church”, our source told us. During the storming of the church, the marauders smashed in the windows, and they threw metal objects, wooden boards with nails, firecrackers, smoke bombs, burning rags, and the like into the building. “They also threw in homemade Molotov Cocktails and the young toughs threatened to destroy the church if they wouldn’t give up”, the UOC/MP spokesman added.
Then, an ambulance arrived, it took away the wounded parishioners, and one of the defenders of the church is still in the oblast intensive care unit. “After this bloody confrontation, the ‘priest’ of the ‘Patriarchate of Kiev’ rewarded the hooligans with bundles of money and congratulated them for their Christmas assault on the church and wished them more ‘great successes’”, our interlocutor noted. To put this situation to rights, Metropolitan Vladimir Sabodan of Kiev and all the Ukraine wrote a letter of protest to President Yushchenko and Prime Minister Timoshenko. In mid-November, supporters of the so-called “Patriarchate of Kiev” made their first attempt to seize the church in the village of Musorovtsy. Two weeks later, they made a second foray, then, according to Archbishop Sergei Gensitsky of Ternopol and Kremenets, the head of the village council personally smashed the lock on the entrance door of the church with a hammer, allowing thugs to attack believers and letting partisans of the “Patriarchate of Kiev” sneak into the church. However, the two previous attempts to capture the church, just like the present one, were failures.
5 January 2010
Interfax-Religion
http://www.interfax-religion.ru/?act=news&div=33627
Editor’s Note:
Stories such as this show us that those such as Jonas Paffhausen, Chad Hatfield, Vassa Larina, Andrei Psaryov, and Hilarion Alfeyev are quislings of the worst sort. The schismatics, sectarians, and Uniates are encouraged by the disunity in our ranks. When, for instance, Vassa Larin defends Robert Taft, she condoned the beating of Fr Mikhail Shuvar by a Uniate mob. After all, the papists are our friends! The Fathers of the Holy Mountain are only fit subjects for laughter (the sound of the giggles of the SVS audience at the prompting of Mr Taft still rings in my ears)! We’re poor ignorant peasants just waiting for enlightenment from our Western betters! Excuse me whilst I hurl to clear the foul taste in my mouth. Whenever you defend the papist pretensions, a Uniate or schismatical mob attacks another one of our Orthodox brethren. If we’d kept our ranks united, perhaps, a brave defender of the Church wouldn’t be lying in the Ternopol Oblast ICU. If this brave person dies, their blood is on the hands of the temporisers. That’s what bloviating about a “religion of fear” leads to. Someone gets hurt… hurt so badly that they are in the ICU. Have they no shame? Are they not mortified at the results of their actions? I fear that they feel nothing save anger at those of us who dare to question their notional constructs. Don’t hold your breath waiting for them to show a scrap of human feeling… it’s not healthy.
BMD