800 churches: Basarabia Metropolis fights Russian patriarchate
The Bessarabia Metropolis, canonically subordinate to the Romanian Orthodox Church (ROC), has won a court ruling granting it the right to use the monument church in Dubăsarii Vechi, Criuleni district.
The right to free use of the buildings of over 800 churches in the Republic of Moldova was previously granted only to the Metropolis of Moldova, which belongs to the Russian Patriarchate, by the Communist government in 2003.
The Bessarabia Metropolis welcomes the court's decision, stating that it confirms a 2023 judgment on the nullity of the contracts that exclusively granted the churches' usage rights to the Metropolis of Moldova. For its part, the Metropolis of Moldova announces it will appeal the ruling issued by the Center Court of Appeal.
This week, the court rejected the appeal filed by the Public Institution of Real Estate Cadastre (Cadastre Office) and upheld the decision to compel the institution to cancel the right previously registered in favour of the Metropolis of Moldova from the register.
According to the lawyer for the Bessarabia Metropolis, Iulian Rusanovschi, the dispute in Dubăsarii Vechi arose after the religious community "St. Archangels Michael and Gabriel" decided to join the Bessarabia Metropolis. Subsequently, the parish priest Teodor Pelin and the institution requested the Cadastre Office to cancel the Metropolis of Moldova's usage right over the church.
"This request was based on the Chișinău Court of Appeal Decision from June 2023, which declared the free-use contract, signed between the Ministry of Culture and the Metropolis of Moldova in 2003, null and void," the lawyer explained to Teleradio-Moldova.
Rusanovschi asserts that the new ruling concerning the Dubăsari church confirms the obligation of state institutions to enforce the 2023 decision, even though the main case is still pending before the Supreme Court of Justice (SCJ). He notes that the Center Court of Appeal's solution can still be appealed, but this would not prevent the sentence's effects.
Referring to the main case, the lawyer states that the SCJ has exceeded the deadline for issuing the final ruling.
"I have no legal explanation; there is no legal explanation. They were obliged to definitively resolve the case by the end of April this year," Rusanovschi told us.
The lawyer mentions that the last hearing in this case took place in June this year, but the SCJ's decision is not yet published.
In a response provided to Teleradio-Moldova, representatives of the Supreme Court of Justice stated that "the decision is in the process of being drafted."
In the case of the Dubăsarii Vechi parish, the lawyer says the Cadastre Office initially refused the cancellation, citing the lack of written consent from the Metropolis of Moldova—an argument he considers unfounded. "The Cadastre Office refuses, claiming there is no written agreement from the Metropolis of Moldova, which is an aberration, as there is a definitive ruling in the matter," Rusanovschi maintains.
The first court ruled in favour of the Bessarabia Metropolis, and the Center Court of Appeal upheld the decision. "The Court of Appeal upheld the first court's ruling, finding that for any request regarding any church, the Cadastre Office is obliged to cancel this information," the lawyer says.
He further claims that similar situations are recorded in other localities, including Ursoaia, Căușeni district, where the same public institution "categorically refuses" to make the cancellation.
He argues that the institution should apply a unitary solution nationwide: "They should create an internal instruction and cancel the registration. But they do not want to do this and compel us to file an application for each church individually."
Metropolis of Moldova: "It's about one parish, not 800. The decision is not final."
The spokesman for the Metropolis of Moldova, Bishop Siluan, insists on the non-final nature of the Center Court of Appeal's ruling in the Dubăsarii Vechi church case.
"We do not comment on anyone's statements. If you refer to a court decision, it's about one parish, not 800," he told Teleradio-Moldova.
Bishop Siluan also told us that the Metropolis of Moldova will challenge the ruling: "The decision concerning Dubăsarii Vechi is not final. We are appealing it. When there is a final decision, we will comment then. We will use all necessary levers to defend our rights."
The Dispute over the 800+ Monument Churches in the Republic of Moldova
The dispute over the over 800 state-protected monument churches and monasteries in the Republic of Moldova originates in 2003 when the Ministry of Culture signed a framework contract with the Metropolis of Moldova, transferring the edifices for free use without consulting the religious communities that used them and without respecting the legal mechanism established by the Government in 2002.
The Government Decision of 2002 stipulated a strict procedure: local mayors' offices had to create commissions to establish the affiliation of each church based on the actual situation on the ground, and the Cadastre Agency was to register the usage right in the register in favour of the religious denomination where the local community was active.
Usage contracts were supposed to be concluded separately with each parish.
In reality, the Ministry of Culture bypassed the entire procedure.
On January 4, 2003, the ministry signed a general contract only with the Metropolis of Moldova, transferring all monument churches included in the Register of Monuments to it.
The Chișinău Court of Appeal would later find that the document:
was not based on a real inventory of the churches;
was not accompanied by official reports, commissions, or supporting materials;
was concluded even though some edifices were in use by communities under the Bessarabia Metropolis;
did not comply with Government Decision 740/2002, which prohibits the block transfer of monuments to a single ecclesiastical institution.
Practically, through this contract, the Metropolis of Moldova was registered in the Real Estate Register as the holder of the usage right over all monuments, and this had the effect for years of blocking access for religious communities that had, in the meantime, returned to the Bessarabia Metropolis.
The situation was repeated in September 2008 when the Ministry of Culture signed another contract, transferring 21 monument monasteries to the Metropolis of Moldova for a period of 50 years. In this case, too, the courts found the lack of any legal basis, the absence of mandatory procedures, and the disregard for the rights of communities under the jurisdiction of the Bessarabia Metropolis.
The Bessarabia Metropolis officially learned about the existence of the contracts only in 2010, during a trial at the Telenești Court. Subsequently, in July of the same year, the institution filed a lawsuit seeking the annulment of both contracts.
The trial lasted over 13 years, being successively examined by the trial court, the Court of Appeal, and the Supreme Court of Justice, with multiple retrials ordered between 2013 and 2021.
The decisive moment came on April 5, 2023, when the Chișinău Court of Appeal definitively annulled the 2003 and 2008 contracts, establishing that they were signed in violation of the law and with disregard for the rights of religious communities. The court indicated that the Ministry of Culture could not present any justifying act for the transfer of the monuments and had concluded the contracts "without prior verification of real possession" and "to the detriment of parishes under the jurisdiction of the Bessarabia Metropolis."
Although the Court of Appeal's ruling is enforceable, it has been appealed to the Supreme Court of Justice. The last hearing at the SCJ took place in June 2025, but a final decision is yet to be published today.
Based on this 2023 decision, the Bessarabia Metropolis is now requesting, parish by parish, the cancellation of the Metropolis of Moldova's usage right where communities have switched to its jurisdiction.
The transition of parishes to the Bessarabia Metropolis intensified after the Russian Federation launched the war in Ukraine and the open support shown by Patriarch Kirill of Moscow for the Russian military aggression.
Translation by Iurie Tataru
