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No one knows whereabouts or condition of two Catholic and one Orthodox priest.
Several priests in Ukraine who have been detained by Russian occupation forces are still missing, with their whereabouts unknown, a human rights website reported.
Two Ukrainian Greek Catholic priests – Fr. Ivan Levytsky and Fr. Bohdan Heleta – have been missing for 13 months. Ukrainian Orthodox Fr. Kostiantyn Maksimov has been gone seven months.
No information is known on whether they are still alive and, if so, where and why they are being held, Forum 18 reported.
Frs. Levytsky and Heleta are members of the Redemptorist order. They were picked up by the Russian National Guard in Berdyansk, a city in the Zaporizhzhia Region, on November 16, 2022, accused of storing weapons and explosives in the church.
Initially, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church said they were being tortured.
“These two priests decided to stay with their people in the temporarily occupied territories,” said His Beatitude Sviatoslav Shevchuk, head and father of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in December 2022. “They served both the Greek Catholic and Roman Catholic congregations, bringing a light of hope to people under occupation. They were arrested, then some military items were planted into the church, and they began accusing these fathers of illegally possessing weapons. Yesterday we received a message that they were being mercilessly tortured. Following the classic Stalinist repressive methods, confessing a crime they did not commit was just beaten out.”
Continued below.
aleteia.org
Several priests in Ukraine who have been detained by Russian occupation forces are still missing, with their whereabouts unknown, a human rights website reported.
Two Ukrainian Greek Catholic priests – Fr. Ivan Levytsky and Fr. Bohdan Heleta – have been missing for 13 months. Ukrainian Orthodox Fr. Kostiantyn Maksimov has been gone seven months.
No information is known on whether they are still alive and, if so, where and why they are being held, Forum 18 reported.
Frs. Levytsky and Heleta are members of the Redemptorist order. They were picked up by the Russian National Guard in Berdyansk, a city in the Zaporizhzhia Region, on November 16, 2022, accused of storing weapons and explosives in the church.
Initially, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church said they were being tortured.
“These two priests decided to stay with their people in the temporarily occupied territories,” said His Beatitude Sviatoslav Shevchuk, head and father of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in December 2022. “They served both the Greek Catholic and Roman Catholic congregations, bringing a light of hope to people under occupation. They were arrested, then some military items were planted into the church, and they began accusing these fathers of illegally possessing weapons. Yesterday we received a message that they were being mercilessly tortured. Following the classic Stalinist repressive methods, confessing a crime they did not commit was just beaten out.”
Continued below.
Priests taken by occupation forces in Ukraine still missing
No one knows whereabouts or condition of two Catholic and one Orthodox priest.
aleteia.org
