KYIV. His Beatitude Metropolitan Volodymyr Sent Letter to President of NASU Boris Paton

Letter of His Beatitude Metropolitan Volodymyr to President of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine Boris Paton

 

PRESIDENT OF NASU

ACADEMICIAN PATON B.E.

 

My Honourable Boris Evhenovych!


The Executive Committee for Restoration of the Church of St. Nicholas, Archbishop of Myra in Lycia and for the Restoration of the Common Grave Memorial Cemetery in Zvirynets addressed to the hierarchy of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. By the joint effort we started the good matter of the restoration of the church, founded in 1916 in the territory of the military cemetery, where the deceased in the World War I had been buried.

The main altar was dedicated to the Holy Hierarch Nicholas, and the Church of the Holy Hierarch Alexius, Metropolitan of Moscow was planned to be arranged in the ground floor. .

In the Soviet times the church was turned into the laboratory block of the Institute of Strength Problems of the NASU, and the tombs of the Common Grave Military Cemetery were destroyed.   The building of the church remained, but unfortunately today the Church is not allowed to perform liturgical services there.

In 2006 the action group for restoration of St. Nicholas Church and the Common Grave Military Cemetery in Zvirynets was organized. During this time the complex work on gathering of the historical information and the documents about the church, the web site of the project was made and registered, the Passport of the church and the accounting records of the church that enabled entering St. Nicholas Church in the State Register of the Fixed Monuments as a monument of architecture of local significance.

This project is supported by the city authorities, representatives of culture, business circles, public organisations and is under the auspices of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.  
In connection with the necessity of preservation of this church, not only as an object of cultural heritage, but as an orthodox shrine, we ask You, Boris Evhenovych to render support and approve respective decisions as for vacation of the building for its further use by the Orthodox Church for the liturgical purposes, and to allot a land plot in the territory of the church to create the Memorial of the Military Common Grave, destroyed in the period of the Soviet regime.  
 

† Volodymyr,
Metropolitan of Kyiv and All Ukraine,
Primate of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church