World Watch - Catholic World Report

In Moscow’s Shadow

A Turn for the Worse?
The Russian Orthodox hierarchy sees the papal visit as the latest in a series of unwelcome challenges to Moscow’s jurisdiction.

Underground Churches?
Within European Russia, Eastern-rite Catholics are searching
for recognition.

No Room in Sevastopol
Catholics—of both Latin and Ukrainian rites—have been frustrated in their efforts to recover old parish churches or build new ones.

In the weeks leading up to the visit to Ukraine by Pope John Paul II, a Byzantine Catholic community in the Black Sea port of Sevastopol is continuing to experience opposition from the Orthodox Church, which has prevented it from building a church to serve its 300-strong community.

Despite having obtained registration a decade ago, the Byzantine Catholics’ persistent attempts to obtain a plot of land in central Sevastopol for their own church have brought them nowhere. The city’s development plan, approved by the city council in 1995, includes room for up to 99 Orthodox churches, but leaves no space for a Byzantine Catholic church.

It was not clear whether the refusal to grant the Byzantine Catholics land for a church was discussed when the papal nuncio to Ukraine, Archbishop Nikola Eterovic, visited Sevastopol in February. But the archbishop did speak with members of the city council about a closely related issue: the city’s refusal to hand back a confiscated Roman Catholic church.

“Our community was registered back in 1991,” recalled Father Pyotr Kamensky, a priest of one of the two Byzantine Catholic communities in Sevastopol. “And despite having applied for an appropriate plot many times, we have failed to obtain one.” After applying for a plot in the Kamyshovaya Bukhta district of the city, the Byzantine Catholics were refused by the city council since the land had already been allocated to the Orthodox. Father Kamensky admitted that the council did offer the parish two other sites, but “one was on the slope of a mountain and the other not far from a dump.” The latest refusal was issued last summer.

Father Kamensky ascribes the city’s rejection to Orthodox intolerance toward the Byzantine Catholics. While denying that there is any such intolerance between (Latin-rite) Roman Catholics and Orthodox, a senior official of the religious affairs department of Sevastopol city administration, Anatoli Sigora, admitted by telephone that “there is certainly such intolerance between the Byzantine Catholics and the Orthodox.”

Accompanying the city plan approved in 1995 was a map with (according to different sources) either 70 or 99 sites for Orthodox churches marked on it. This plan was presented to the city council by the Orthodox dean of the Sevastopol region, Father Georgy Polyakov. Today a spokesman for Orthodox Metropolian Lazar (Shvets) of Sevastopol cannot recall the exact number of projected sites with certainty. “I cannot say about 99, but I know for sure about 70 such planned buildings,” said Father Paisi Dmokhovsky.

Viktor Yevlashkin, deputy head of the city council, declined to give any details of the plan, telling Keston that it was perhaps “misinformed” regarding the number of Orthodox church sites. And although he confirmed that the plan “did exist,” Sigora declared it “has lost its legislative power.” He said that the rejection of the Catholics’ bid was due to other reasons: “We offered the Byzantine Catholics two plots of land, but they rejected them. They insisted on a plot in the city center, which is impossible.”

However, when pressed to reveal whether the city’s plan restricts the Byzantine Catholics, Sigora replied:

“I thought they had already built a church,” Father Dmokhovsky remarked about the Byzantine Catholics. “I feel sorry for them.” But the Orthodox cleric declined to say whether there was any official policy restricting the Catholics. He reported that Orthodox church-building is continuing in the city. The most recent parish church was completed in 1997; five more are now under construction. And he suggested that the 70 plots allocated in the city plan may not be adequate to provide for the growing number of Orthodox parishes. “At the moment we have at least 15 communities on the waiting list for registration,” he reported. There are currently 31 registered Orthodox parishes loyal to the Moscow Patriarchate in Sevastopol.

Orthodox obstruction has also prevented the Byzantine Catholics from joining the Inter-confessional Council of the Crimea, of which a Roman Catholic priest, Father Roman Derdzyak, is a permanent member. Father Pyotr reports that the Byzantine Catholics of Crimea were twice refused admittance on the grounds that they were a “non-traditional” denomination in the region.

After battling unsuccessfully for the return of its parish church building for over five years—and even being turned down by the Ukrainian Supreme Court —the Roman Catholic parish of St. Clement’s in Sevastopol has taken its case to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. The city administration believes the Catholics’ demands are within the law, but the city council, which has the final say, is refusing to return the church, which now houses a cinema. Asked by Keston News Service where the Catholics should hold their services, Viktor Yevlashkin replied: “That’s their problem and we haven’t put that question to them.” The pastor of St. Clement’s, Father Leonid Tkachuk is particularly upset that public toilets are still operating where the altar once stood.

Having exhausted all legal avenues in Ukraine, the parish submitted its case to the European Court on November 6, 2000. In its suit, it is demanding not only the return of the church but compensation for loss of $140,000. A spokesman for the Court confirmed from Strasbourg that the parish’s application has been received, but reported that it had not yet been registered. The court—whose jurisdiction covers Ukraine as a member of the Council of Europe—will then have to rule on whether the case is admissible.

Built in 1911, St. Clement’s church was closed and confiscated in 1936, when its pastor was arrested. It was then used to house an electricity sub-station. Partially destroyed during World War II, it was later rebuilt as the Druzhba children’s cinema. Father Tkachuk told Keston that in addition to continued use of toilets on the site of the altar the church “is still being defiled by the screening of inferior films that are far from being children’s films.”

Despite the return of confiscated religious property in Ukraine and the persistent efforts of local Catholics—including more than 50 appeals to local officials, the Ukrainian president, and Pope John Paul II—the parish has had no success. Legal cases brought by the parish in 1999 and 2000 were unsuccessful. In May 2000 the board for civil cases at the Supreme Court turned down the parish’s appeal against the city council’s refusal, in February 2000, to return the church.
Registered in 1995, the 300-strong Catholic parish has to meet for services in the priest’s apartment, which cannot accommodate all those wishing to attend. “The community has been allowed to hold services in the church only twice: in 1998 and 1999,” Father Tkachuk complained.

Asked why the church had not been returned to the Catholic parish, Yevlashkin replied that the building was not a church but a children’s cinema; he claimed that the church and its foundations had been destroyed during the war. However, a document from the Sevastopol State Archive (of which Father Tkachuk produced a copy) disproves this contention. The certificate of the building’s technical condition, dated October 1958, indicated that the church building has retained its walls and foundations largely (80-100 percent) intact and is deemed “suitable for restoration and reconstruction.”

Next Yevlashkin went on to cite another underlying reason for the refusal. “According to article 21 of the principles of the law on culture, the closure of cultural establishments is not permitted in cases where premises are taken from them and transferred into the possession of, or for the free use of, religious organizations,” he claimed. However, in Sevastopol, the Church of St. Peter and St. Paul— previously the city’s Palace of Culture—has been formally handed over to the Orthodox, and services are held there on feast days.

Anatoli Sigora, of the religious-affairs department in Sevastopol, confirmed that “justice is on the side of the Catholics, and if the city council wished, the cinema could be relocated to any of the other 19 functioning cinemas in the city, particularly given that attendance at the Druzhba cinema is quite low.”

Under current law, Sevastopol’s cultural establishments are under the jurisdiction of the city administration, but the city council must agree to any transfer of one of these establishments. The city council clearly has different plans for the building.