THE Primate of Ukraine’s independent Orthodox Church (OCU), Metropolitan Epiphany (Dumenko), has urged followers not to “provoke conflict” over Kyiv’s historic Pechersk-Lavra monastery, after its abbot was arrested while resisting a state repossession order (News, 31 March).
“Enemies of Ukraine would like to incite religious confrontation among our people — but we are striving to achieve understanding and church unity,” Metropolitan Epiphany said. “The opponents would very much like to present this as an inter-confessional struggle, passing themselves off as martyrs, but we are doing everything to prevent their plans from coming true.
“We wish to free the Lavra not from monks or students but from Russian world delusions, from service to a foreign Caesar whom the Lavra’s current leaders fear and respect more than God.”
The OCU leader issued the appeal on Sunday as a new Orthodox director was appointed for the 11th-century complex, known as the Monastery of the Caves, after the detention of its Father-General, Metropolitan Pavel (Lebed), who was electronically tagged and placed under house arrest at the weekend for inciting religious enmity.
The Ukrainian Culture Minister, Oleksandr Tkachenko, confirmed that government commissioners had twice been barred from entering the monastery by supporters of the rival Moscow-linked Orthodox Church (UOC), whose Primate, Metropolitan Onufriy (Berezovsky), was shown on his Church’s website leading normal weekend liturgies at its basilicas.
Mr Tkachenko told Radio Svoboda that he also hoped that UOC representatives would “come to their senses” and comply with the repossession, which, legal experts have warned, could take several months.
“If the police record a case of non-admission, the law stipulates pretty clear procedures for dealing with those not wanting to obey the law: enforcement agencies and bailiffs can use a whole set of measures,” Mr Tkachenko said.
The UOC was notified in early March that its ten-year lease on the state-owned monastic complex was being terminated, after security-service raids on sites belonging to the Church, up to 30 of whose leaders, including Metropolitan Pavel, have been sanctioned for collaborating with the Russian invasion.
UOC members refused to hand over the Lavra, however, by the set date of 29 March, claiming that state officials lacked appropriate documents, while the Metropolitan said that he was contesting the repossession with a legal injunction. This was refused by a Kyiv court at the end of last week.
In a statement online on Monday, the UOC insisted that criminal proceedings against Metropolitan Pavel had been “fabricated”, and that he had “always condemned armed aggression, praying for peace and the health of soldiers from Ukraine’s armed forces”.
The UOC also sent letters of complaint at the weekend to foreign embassies, and has published messages of support from Orthodox leaders abroad.
In the latest, a bishop from Serbia denounced the “monstrous state terror of the Ukrainian authorities”, comparing actions by Kyiv to “the fascist struggle against dissidents”.
The Orthodox Primate of the Czech Lands & Slovakia, Metropolitan Rastislav (Gont), accused Ukraine of “unjust and unforgivable oppression”. Moves “to replace the canonical Church with schismatic structures” had “significantly intensified since the start of the military conflict between Ukraine and Russia”.
On Monday, however, the governing body of the Conference of European Churches said that it had now “made a positive decision” on the membership application submitted last September by the OCU, and hoped to proceed with it “in coming months”.
The latest church disputes coincided with Finland’s formal admission to NATO on Tuesday, as intense fighting continued for control of the eastern town of Bakhmut, and Western tanks arrived in Ukraine in expectation of a spring counter-offensive.
Commemorations were also held of civilians massacred a year ago in Bucha and other towns, in what was widely seen as a prelude to what would have occurred if Russian forces had captured Kyiv.
In his Sunday appeal, Metropolitan Epiphany said that the Moscow-linked UOC had long been “held in the yoke of slavery by foreign powers”, and called on its members to “free themselves from shackles” and “join in building a single local Church”.
He also called on Ukrainian protesters, however, to treat the Pechersk-Lavra monastery with respect, and said that he counted on state help in providing conditions for continuing “prayer and monastic life” on the 57-acre complex.
Archimandrite Avramiy (Lativa), who was appointed as the monastery’s acting director after transferring from the UOC to the OCU, condemned Metropolitan Pavel’s “unjust curses” against President Zelensky and his government, and said that he also hoped to renew the Pechersk-Lavra as “a real place for serving God and the Church, not personalities and ideologies”.
In a weekend video recording, he said: “What is happening around the Lavra is not a confrontation between state and religion or violation of freedom: it is the liberation of our shrine from the influence of a hostile Russian state.
“Our Lavra brethren will continue praying for our head of state, as the word of God commands us, blessing him in his fight against the aggressor, and the false Russian peace that brought war and death to our people.”
In weekend messages, however, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow told Patriarch Theophilus III of Jerusalem that the “Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate” had “entered a difficult period of persecution by the authorities and schismatic organisations”, aimed at “destroying canonical Orthodoxy in Ukraine”.
He also expressed “great sadness” at the bomb assassination of the military blogger Vladlen Tatarsky in St Petersburg on Sunday. The Patriarch said that the dispute over the Pechersk Lavra was a sign that godless people sought “to capture the heart of holy Russia” when its forces were “courageously fighting for the establishment of peace, goodness and justice”.
In a message on Sunday to President Putin to mark the Day of Unity of Russia and Belarus, the Patriarch said that “fraternal Slavic peoples” were “bound by a common history, spiritual and cultural traditions”, and that he was confident that “ideals of friendship, good-neighbourliness, peace, and harmony” would continue to be “affirmed in the life of contemporaries”.
President Putin’s children’s-rights commissioner, Maria Lvova-Belova, was charged as an alleged war criminal last month by the International Criminal Court, in The Hague, for “unlawfully deporting” Ukrainian children. Meeting her last Friday, Patriarch Kirill praised her efforts “to protect motherhood, childhood, and large families”, and said that Russia could not “afford the luxury of not increasing its population”.