After decades of legal disputes, Ukraine’s Catholic community has received the right to use Kyiv’s historic St Nicholas Church for the next 50 years, under an agreement signed with the state. Source: Catholic Review.
The church, a national cultural landmark confiscated during the Soviet era, remains state-owned but will now function primarily as a parish church.
The agreement marks the most significant step so far toward restoring Catholic life in one of Kyiv’s most recognisable churches, even as it falls short of full restitution – the return of the church to Catholic ownership.
OSV News reached Fr Pavlo Vyshkovsky OMI from St Nicholas Parish, on January 9, as Kyiv faced a night of Russian attacks.
“We had another very difficult night,” Fr Vyshkovsky said. “There is no electricity, no water, no heating.” Despite the emergency conditions in the capital, it was important for him to comment on what the 50-year agreement means for the parish and for Catholics in Ukraine.
“For years we could not even register our legal address at the church,” Fr Vyshkovsky said.
“That meant we had no direct contracts for electricity or water and paid several times more than we should have. With this agreement, that finally changes,” he said.
St Nicholas Church, built between 1899 and 1909 in the neo-Gothic style by architect Vladyslav Horodetskyi, is one of two Roman Catholic churches in Kyiv built before 1917, when the city was part of the Russian Empire in its final decades, and before the October Revolution of 1917 that swallowed Ukraine as one of the Soviet republics.
Closed and confiscated by Soviet authorities in 1938, the church was later converted into a concert hall and placed under state administration. For decades, it remained one of the most visible symbols of unresolved church property disputes in Ukraine after regaining independence in 1991.
Although the Ministry of Culture promised to transfer the church to the local faithful, it did not happen — with the parish forced to function in a legal gray zone, dependent on the state cultural institution formally assigned to the building.
Church leaders said the agreement provides long-sought legal clarity.
FULL STORY
Kyiv’s iconic St Nicholas Church returns to Catholic hands for 50 years (By Katarzyna Szalajko, OSV News via Catholic Review)
