Who Does That? - Part 1 - Ukrainian Priest (1)

In early 2019, St. Peter and Paul Orthodox Church in Miami started the immigration process for a priest to come to become our new priest from Ukraine. This was begun because we had been told there was no priest available in this country. We worked for four years doing the paperwork and waiting through the pandemic and then the outbreak of the Ukrainian war. We started attempting to assist this priest of getting out of the country. And finally, on November 14, 2022, he was allowed to leave the country to go to Germany to finalize the paperwork to be able to enter the United States. He stayed in Germany with a family at their generosity who was a friend of one of our parishioners. And a few days before Thanksgiving, their paperwork was complete and they were allowed to leave to head to the United States. Randy Homick had already sent them $3,000 of his own money for their travel expenses. And once he knew they were ready to leave Germany, he also paid for their flights, four of them, from Germany to the United States, having already paid for their flights to Germany. And on November 22, two days before Thanksgiving, Fr. Joseph Lucas, Dean of South Florida, Priest of Christ the Savior, Orthodox Cathedral in Miami, who had helped occasionally with some of the immigration process, sent an email informing us that the priest would not be allowed to live in our church until the clergyman, who belonged to another jurisdiction, who was our tenant, was off the property. He gave him seven days to leave the property. This man was friends with Joseph Lucas for at least six years, knew of his current situation, knew that he was living on our church property in a small adjacent apartment, and for some reason claimed that the bishop demanded he leave the property within seven days. And that would have made him homeless while he was desperately searching for a job. The following day, in a Zoom meeting, which was the day before Thanksgiving, not a day that anybody thinks they have to spend in an emergency parish council meeting, Lucas informed everyone that supposedly the bishop has said he will put this Ukrainian family in a hotel until we make arrangements to evict our tenant. This, of course, is illegal. It is inhumane. It is unconscionable that a bishop or a priest or any human, Christian or not, would tell someone they would have to leave their place of residence, which they have a lease for, in seven days. The law in our area is 60 days notice before you can even file for an eviction. No one had any understanding of why this would be spoken. We didn't have any valid reason. We were never given any valid reason for this to have to be imposed on any of us. On Thanksgiving Day, the Ukrainian priest and his family arrived in the United States and were staying with some friends for a few days before they expected to move to our church and move into the apartment that was fully furnished, newly renovated and ready for them to live in and to take up his job as our parish priest. We were prepared to do whatever it would take to help this family adjust to life in America and life in Miami. Our tenant, being a man of good repute and knowing many people in the area, knowing the language, knowing the culture of the area, and volunteering for the police had been instrumental in making our property a safer place to be. We fully expected for him to be instrumental in helping this family adjust and get situated, find their way around and meet people and learn the culture and so on, and also to be our groundskeeper and our security guard. For some unknown reason, though, Bishop Alexander Golitsyn and Father Joseph Lucas, as well as Father Marcus Birch, the Chancellor of the Diocese of the South of the Orthodox Church of America, all in agreement, continue to cause trouble for our small parish who only wants to worship God, serve the people and move forward and thrive as a community and a parish. As a result of our refusal to engage in an illegal eviction and bring our church into legal trouble and also to have compassion and consideration for our tenant, the Ukrainian priest and his family were placed by Lucas in, we believe, a hotel near Lucas' church, was then introduced to his church while we were told we could not have any contact with him. This is the man who we had been planning to have our priest and was already, according to the church hierarchy, assigned as our priest, and we were being told that we could have no contact with him. This was quite shocking and unbelievable. At the same time, in meetings with Lucas, we heard lie after lie, things that didn't matter, claimed things that were on video, claimed one thing that was proven false by video. And other things that we know from history were complete lies. And when we still wouldn't take illegal action against our tenant, Randy was falsely accused of threatening to deport the Ukrainian priest. And this could not be possibly true because Randy had paid for all of their expenses and through the immigration process had contributed much of his own money to support that process. Next, we heard about a letter that was sent to the greater church and other members of the greater church that was defamatory of our retired interim priest at the time, of our tenant, and about us as well. We've never seen this letter, but we know it's there because we were informed by a reliable source who had read it. Then, just after Christmas, while this family who was still in limbo and not stationed at their job site and parish that they expected to be, our tenant was accused by Lucas in writing of crimes that he did not commit. Those accusations were proven to be false straight from the mouth of the lawyer involved in those accusations and also a business partner of our tenant. Then they were allowed, the Ukrainian family was allowed to be shown around Miami by our retired priest who had been filling in for five years now and brought to our church to see the building and so on and they agreed. The priest agreed to come at that point and be our priest. But still, Lucas, Birch, and the bishop would not allow him to come as long as our tenant was on the property. Still, we had no legitimate reason for this demand. We were working to try to find a solution that did not cause our tenant to be homeless, but supported him in finding a new place to live. By middle of January, we had found that solution and we helped him to move out and off the property. At that time, Lucas, Birch, and the bishop demanded of this tenant a letter of indemnity to release them from all liability having to do with them trying to evict him. Our tenant did not have to do that. He could have simply walked away and never looked back. But he complied in an effort to help us and the priest and his family to move forward as a parish for the priest to be allowed to move into his apartment and start his job. Throughout this whole process, Lucas kept demanding new criteria. Now you have to do this. Now you have to do that. Now you have to do this. And even after the letter of indemnity was sent, and of course, why would they need one if they hadn't done anything wrong? But even after that was sent, Lucas demanded we change all the locks on the church. Even the lock on the storage space where we had agreed to let our tenant keep his things for several months while he got settled elsewhere. Expecting that someone from our parish would have to meet him at the property to let him in to get his own things whenever he needed. Ridiculous. This whole ordeal had been extremely stressful for all of us. Emotional rollercoaster and ridiculous and nasty, mean-spirited activity coming from the priest and the bishop. And after we complied with everything, including changing the locks and the tenant was off the property, we expected our priest to come and be able to live. And after a week of silence, we discovered through an email that he had been reassigned to another church far away from us. Everyone in the parish was saddened and distressed by this whole ordeal. And yet, once this priest was sent away, there was a sense of relief that it was over. Sadness that we did not get our priest, that we worked for and waited for, that we paid for. And then we were promised that we would get all of our money back. Which was a minimum of $25,000 with immigration and the other expenses it took to get everything prepared to house an entire family. And we were told we would get all of our money back. But in the end, for some strange reason, Lucas had the final say. He's not the treasurer of the Diocese of the South. He's not anything but a local dean whose only job is to assist the bishop in supporting the parishes. His job is not to lie and manipulate and hold a priest away from his parish, demand people take illegal action and evict a man, and so on. It's not his job to demand we change the locks. It's not his job to decide what we get back from our expenses that they caused us to lose. And yet, he gave the final say. And we were shorted 40% of what we expected to get back. We feel betrayed, abused, manipulated. We feel ashamed of these men who claim to be priests and bishops. Their behavior is certainly not Christ-like in any way. And while all we have wished for is to have a thriving parish, which we had hoped to have with this Ukrainian priest and his family, all of our plans and all of our hopes were dashed. And the trouble did not stop there. Repeatedly, over the next several months, they caused more and more trouble for us, resulting in a legal dispute over the property and continual slander and defamation. The smear campaign that these men are spreading against a few people who are holding strong onto their church is unimaginable. At this point, we are fighting priests and bishops to keep a church open, to hold onto the property that has been owned and operated since 1954 by the parish. If you are so inclined to assist us in this battle, we would greatly appreciate it.