The church of St. Nicholas can be restored

MKIP press conference

Photo by Antonina Vishnevska

For the restoration of an architectural monument of national importance – St. Nicholas Church – today there are no obstacles. This was stated by a representative of the Ministry of Culture and Information Policy at a press conference.

“I emphasize that currently there are no legal obstacles to saving the church from destruction, just as there are no obstacles for the religious services of the religious community of the parish of St. Nicholas.” noted Head of the Permitting and Conciliation Department of the Ministry of Culture Nataliya Voitseschuk.

She also added that the transfer of the church to the ownership of the parish is only a parallel process and has no effect on the restoration of the building.

“IN the draft law, which will now be considered by the parliament in the second reading, will include amendments regarding religious objects and their transfer for free use[…] Therefore, we will see how quickly this will be passed according to the regulations, but we have great hope that this law will be adopted in May“, she said Nataliya Voitseschuk.

The question of transferring the church to the permanent free use of the parish of the Roman Catholic Church remains open since the fire in the building in 2021. After that incident, emergency work was carried out in it and, according to the words the abbot of the temple Pavlo Vyshkovskyi, the condition only worsened. The parish tried to maintain a suitable appearance on its own.

“In January 2022, they managed to complete the preliminary emergency work, and the then Minister of Culture Oleksandr Tkachenko gathered the media to report on the spent 21.5 million collected from businesses and charities. These funds were enough to cover all the windows in the church with polyethylene, to hang temporary lighting and batteries on the walls, which are already an insult to such a monument, to stretch a protective net against stones falling from above, and to cover the floor with protective chipboard plates“, he said in a comment UP. Culture.

At the same time, Pavlo Vyshkovsky emphasized that after the church is returned to the property of the parish, it will be able to restore its original appearance: the parishioners have already scanned the walls, found archival documents about the appearance of the church and are ready to carry out a full diagnosis of the building.

The situation around the church of St. Nicholas

In addition to the issue of restoration, I am also considering the problem of moving the National House of Organ and Chamber Music of Ukraine to the premises of the wing of the International Center for Culture and Arts of the Federation of Trade Unions.

Until now nand the whole complex of buildings is a court arrests were made due to suspicion of misappropriation of property by officials. by law “On Culture” it is forbidden to evict cultural institutions from their premises without providing them with another equivalent premises.

In 2021, MKIP and the organization “Religious community of the parish of St. Nicholas of the Kyiv-Zhytomyr diocese of the Roman Catholic Church in the city of Kyiv” signed a memorandum of cooperation in which they agreed on the transfer of the monument to the community.

At the beginning of 2024, the Ministry of Culture and Information Policy of Ukraine obliged transfer the Church of St. Nicholas in Kyiv to the religious community of the Roman Catholic Church by May 1, 2024.

Church of St. Nicholas – one of the two Roman Catholic churches in Kyiv, built before 1917. It was built in 1899-1909 in the Neo-Gothic style by Kyiv architect Vladyslav Horodetsky.

Since 2009, the temple premises have been in a state of disrepair. Activists have repeatedly drawn attention to the fact that parts of the church’s facade are falling off.