739 clergymen took the spiritual care of the believers and held the religious services, 8 religious periodicals are published. The liturgies were recited in 138 temporarily rented, 878 cult and reconstructed quarters. Since 1992 131 cult buildings had started being operated at the territory of our oblast. The construction of 166 more objects had not been completed yet. The level of the provision of the religious organizations with the apartments was 68% in 1998. The insufficient amount of the temples and of the prayerful houses with the increasing number of the religious communities at the background caused the certain tension among the believers. But in 1999 the network of the religious organizations became 103 units bigger then it was in 1998. At the same time about 300 settlements of Vinnytchina had not any religious community.

The Orthodoxy numberd the biggest amount of believers in our oblast. The Orthodoxy integrated 851 religious organizations, which were the subject to 4 church jurisdictions.

Lately the development of the system of the Roman-Catholic organizations had noticeably slowed down.

In 1999 the statutes of one community and of one mission were registered. In general there were 110 communities of the roman-catholic church, one mission and 6 monasteries and convents in our oblast. The Ukrainian Greek-Catholic church numberd 9 communities and one cloister. The position of the major denominations consolidated. In 1999 27 religious communities were established. They included 18 Gospel Christian-Baptists, 5 Adventists of the seventh day, 1 charismatic community, 2 communities of the Christians of the faith in Gospel, the Gospel Christians. According to the statistics only 276 protestant religious organizations of 20 directions and currents, were active in our region on 1.01.2000. It exceeded 21 % of the whole religious network of our region. The off-center Podillya religions included the communities of the Moslem, German

Gospel-Luteranist church, the Newapostles church, the community of the native faith, the community of the Kryshna*s consciousness, the community of the ecclesiastical Christians-molokans and others. The believers were rather active to use international contacts with the other believers outside Ukraine.

During the year 1999 213 foreign missioners and priests from 18 countries arrived to our state. 73 persons arrived from the USA, 59 people came from Poland and 42 came from Scandinavian Peninsula. This very time Vinnytchina got 250 tons of the humanitarian help from the different religious organizations. This was food, building stuffs, motor transport and woodworkers.

 

This information is given by the Department

of nationalities, migration and religion

Tel: 32-38-35, 32-50-30