PAVLOHRAD, UKRAINE: In late 2008, the faithful members of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Parish of the Protection of the Most Holy Mother of God (Pokrova) held services at the historical site of the cathedral church in the city center. Pavlohrad is located in the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast and is the center for the Dnipropetrovsk-Zaporivzhzhya Eparchy of the UAOC.

The Pavlohrad Cathedral was one of the first churches to embrace the newly-resurrected Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church at the end of the second deacde of the 20th century. In the May-June 1958 edition of Church and Life (Tserkva i Zhyttya), a magazine then published in the Diaspora by the Ukrainian Orthodox Brotherhood of Metropolitan Vasyl Lypkivskyj, appears a letter of March, 1958, from Protopresbyter Ioan Baska in Argentina.

Fr. Ioan served as a protodeacon and priest in the Pavlohrad Cathedral, and describes the glorious celebration of the services of Passion Week and the Resurrection in the year 1919. At that time, there were around 15,000 people who attended the cathedral, all descendents of the Zaporizhian Cossaks, mainly farmers, physically strong, and with a deep sense of Ukrainian national dignity. In the words of Fr. Baska, "probably something such as this in Ukraine will never again be."

Between 1933-35, numerous churches and religious buildings were demolished by the Soviet regime, especially those which were not subjected to the Russian Moscow Patriarchate. The UAOC Cathedral in Pavlohrad shared this fate. The imposing neo-Byzantine edifice (pictured below) was reduced to rubble by Soviet bulldozers. In its place, was constructed a public square with several trees with a monument to Lenin.

Today, a memorial cross marks the site where the cathedral once stood, in a busy throughoufare of the city. Pictured here is the pastor, the Rt. Rev. Archimandrite Nikanor and UAOC parishioners who gathered for the service of remembrance. A rare photo of the cathedral and maps of Pavlohrad, showing the central location of the church are also shown.