Sevastopol Catholics attend Christmas Eve service in the rain outside closed doors of a Catholic church
A Catholic worshiper community in the name of Saint Clement of Rome in Sevastopol, the Crimean peninsula annexed from Ukraine, held a Christmas church service on December 24. Approximately one hundred church-goers attended the service ministered at the closed doors of a Catholic church at Ushakova square.
The worshipers stood under the rain and mostly in the darkness due to absence of proper lighting, according to a reporter from Krym Realii online. Father Anatoly, the priest who ministered the services, thanked the congregation for “not staying cozily at home where you could drink tea or wine, but coming to the service instead.”
Father Anatoly urged his flock to recall the events of the past year and pray for the next year to be more generous to the congregation. In 2017, the worshipers expected a resolution of the ongoing matter concerning the church that they had hoped would be returned to them. This did not happen.
The Catholic congregation in Sevastopol comprises over two hundred worshipers. In 2014, a religious organization of the Roman Catholic Church in Sevastopol re-registered under Russian law. Despite all the efforts of the congregation and despite the existing law on restitution of religious property, the building of the Catholic Church at 1 Schmidt Street has not been returned to the faithful.
Currently the building is occupied by a dysfunctional municipal children’s movie theater, the Druzhba. According to Dmitry Garnega, a chairperson of the Sevastopolkino, a local cinema authority, the theater is expected to be refurbished soon.
Before the Russian annexation of the Crimea, the City Council of Sevastopol refused to return the church building to the Catholic congregation, grounding its refusal on the fact that it was not a state property but part of the municipal community property.