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CASES
OF INTEREST
Ukrainian
Orthodox Church of the
USA, Archbishop Antony et. als. v. Luchejko et. als.
This suit was initiated in May of 1999 by
the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of United States of America [hereinafter
referred to as UOC-USA], Archbishop Antony, and a small minority group
of former parishioners of the Holy Ascension Parish of Passaic NJ, Inc.
now located in Clifton, NJ [hereinafter referred to as Holy Ascension
Parish]. The Defendants are the Holy Ascension Parish, the Parish Board
and individual Parish Board members. Thereafter, Metropolitan
Constantine was interpleaded as a third party defendant.
The dispute began after the Defendants
questioned the propriety of certain actions in December of 1994 taken
by Plaintiff Archbishop Antony and other church corporation office
holders, especially the signing of the “Points of Agreement” which the
Defendants show constituted an unlawful and unauthorized attempt to
merge the UOC-USA with a totally separate and unrelated (even sometimes
inimical) church, the Church of Constantinople [sometimes referred to
herein as the Ecumenical Patriarchate or Ecumenical Patriarch of
Constantinople]. By these actions, the Plaintiff Archbishop Antony and
the other hierarchs left and abandoned the UOC-USA and became clerics
in a totally distinct and separate religious institution thereby
forfeiting all corporate, spiritual or any other authority over member
parishes of the UOC-USA.
In response, the Plaintiff, Archbishop
Antony allegedly “suspended” the parish and directed the then parish
pastor, Rev. Mironko, not to celebrate liturgy; the Archbishop refused
to recognize any actions of the lawfully elected Parish Board.
The Parish Board, in turn, hired another Ukrainian Orthodox priest
which action the Defendants state was authorized by the Holy Ascension
Parish’s organic documents and by the UOC-USA’s long standing customs
and practices. Thereafter, this litigation began.
The complaint, as advanced by all the
plaintiffs, seeks to assert control over the internal management,
operations, property and assets of Holy Ascension Parish. The
Defendants responded asserting that such control over all parish assets
is vested solely in the parish itself and that the parish has by custom
and its own organic documents the right to secede from the UOC-USA. The
Defendants also asserted claims against the bishops sounding in
common-law tort, fraud, misrepresentation, and deceit.
During the course of the litigation, the
claims and defenses of all of the clerical Plaintiffs and of a
substantial majority of the individual Plaintiffs were dismissed with
prejudice which dismissals were never appealed. Seven individual
Plaintiffs were reinstated as plaintiffs in August 6, 2001 who the
Trial Court on March 14, 2003 concluded had legal standing to pursue
the claims alleged in the complaint.
The Chancery Division of Somerset County
had also granted Final Judgment on these claims in favor of the
plaintiffs who still remain in this action, ruling essentially that the
claims of the Plaintiffs are justified under the Constitution of the
UOC-USA and because the defendant parish is a part of a “hierarchical”
church organization which is centrally controlled in all important
respects. The Judgment also granted the Plaintiffs’ request that
individuals approved by the Archbishop be appointed to the parish board
thus giving control of the property and assets of the parish to the
UOC-USA hierarchy. At the same time, the Chancery Division entered
judgment against Defendants in this action on their counterclaim
against the senior bishops of the UOC-USA on the basis that a secular
court had no jurisdiction to entertain the Defendants’ claims against
these persons sounding in common law tort, fraud, misrepresentation,
and deceit. The Defendants appealed the trial court decision to
the NJ Superior Court - Appellate Division.
On November 27, 2004, the Appellate
Division reversed the September 3, 2003, Final Judgment of the
Chancery Division of Somerset County which approved the Archbishop's
appointment of the Parish Board (and thus giving control of the
property back to the Parish) and further concluded that the court
lacked jurisdiction over the remainder of the issues in the case since
they involved in the court's view religious questions. The
Plaintiffs appealed this reversal to the NJ Supreme Court and the
Defendants Cross-appealed the other juridictional conclusions of the
court. Tthe Supreme Court decided not to grant certifacation in
March of 2005.
In 2007, the Plaintiff UOC-USA again attempted to take control of
the parish property by obtaining a "church court" decree against
the Defendants and then requesting that the civil courts enforce
it. The Defendants' response made clear the following
fundamental facts:
(1) the Plaintiff UOC-USA was established as a
diocese, a subunit and integral part of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church,
a spiritually hierarchical religious body with its home and center of
authority in Kyiv, Ukraine, in the early decades of the 20th century;
(2) the Plaintiff UOC-USA, through the actions
of its senior clerical officials, is now in open rebellion against its
Mother Church, the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, and has, contrary to
both civil and religious legal tenet, cast off its obedience to the
Church in Ukraine and its Patriarch and has, without the consent and in
defiance of the wishes of Holy Ascension Parish and the individual
Defendants named in the Complaint of the Plaintiff UOC-USA, purported
to affiliate itself with a competing Greek-language church jurisdiction
based in Istanbul, Turkey;
(3) Holy Ascension Parish in Clifton, New
Jersey, was organized under the leadership and at the behest of the
Ukrainian Orthodox Church based Kyiv, Ukraine, and has remained
steadfast in its spiritual loyalty and fealty to its Mother Church
until the present day and has resisted the impositions of the plaintiff
UOC-USA designed to force it into rebellion against its Orthodox Mother
Church in Ukraine and its Patriarch;
(4) the individual Defendants named by the
Plaintiff UOC-USA in its instant Complaint have, as has Holy Ascension
Parish, likewise insisted on their continued spiritual loyalty and
fealty to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Kyiv, now under the
patriarchal leadership of Patriarch Filaret of Kyiv, and have similarly
rejected measures by the Plaintiff UOC-USA and its clerical leadership
in South Bound Brook intended to force them into leaving their
traditional religious affiliation with and spiritual subjection to the
Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Kyiv;
(5) the church court judgment issued by the
Plaintiff UOC-USA and its clerical leadership in South Bound Brook
against both the Holy Ascension Church of Clifton and the individual
Defendants has been countermanded and declared null and void by a
comprehensive decree of the Patriarch of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church
in Kyiv, ruling that the actions taken by the clerical leadership of
the Plaintiff UOC-USA are null, void and of no effect; and
(6) in its present civil action against Holy
Ascension Parish and the individual Defendants here, the Plaintiff
UOC-USA and its clerical leadership in South Bound Brook attempt to
invoke the legal and equitable jurisdiction of this Court in favor of
the judgments and rulings of its Turkish church leader and his new
organization to which it has unlawfully subjected itself, and, at the
same time, attempt to invoke the power of this Court against the
Orthodox Patriarch in Kyiv to have his superior Decree in this matter
superseded by an order of this Court.
The invocation by the Plaintiff UOC-USA of the legal and equitable
jurisdiction of this Court contravenes in a variety of respects the
guarantees of the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United
States, assuring the individual Defendants here (as well as Holy
Ascension Parish) of the free exercise of religion and the
noninterference by secular courts in religious matters as previously
determined by the Appellate Division in the same dispute and, for this
reason, should be rebuffed and dismissed by the Court.
Judge McVeigh of the Chancery Division, Passaic County,
rejected the Plaintiff's request and concluded that the civil courts
lacked subject matter jurisdiction over this matter. This decision was
affirmed by the
Appellate Division in a strongly worded opinion in August, 2009. The
UOC-USA attempted to have the matter reviewed by the Supreme Court
of New Jersey but its request was denied on December 15,
2009.
The defendants were respresented by Myroslaw Smorosky.
Prof. E.R. Lanier , Georgia State Law School was counsel pro hac vice.
For additonal information, please visit The Website SAVE OUR
UOC-USA
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