On February 2, Ternopil Regional Council hosted a meeting between Chairman of the Regional Council Mikhail Golovko and representatives of the Basilian monks in Ukraine Ivan Shkolik and Joseph Kralka. This was reported on the Facebook page of the Basilian monks.

“The participants of the meeting discussed the issues of ownership of the cultural and religious pilgrimage center of the Pochaev Holy Dormition Lavra. The Fathers expressed the position of the Basilian rank, according to which the monks of the monastery voluntarily accepted unity with Rome and from 1712 to 1831 the shrine belonged to the Unia Greek Catholic Church and was the center of the Chief Rector of the rank – Protoarchimandrite, and was forcibly transferred to another denomination, “says the publications.

Ivan Shkolik also handed over a letter from Svyatoslav Shevchuk about the return of the shrine “to the bosom of the UGCC.”

The Basilian monks stated that they consider the shrine “the center of the awakening of the identity of our people, a symbol of the revival of the Ukrainian Church.”

They noted that “the heyday of the shrine fell precisely in the period of the 18th-19th centuries: the majestic Assumption Cathedral was built, buildings were erected separately – the temple of Iov Pochaevsky, the buildings of the monastery, the bishop’s house. The famous Pochaev miraculous icon of the Most Holy Theotokos was crowned by Pope Clement XIV in 1773, and in the monastery printing house at that time, even earlier than Ivan Kotlyarevsky’s Aeneid, literature was published in colloquial Ukrainian.”

According to the Greek Catholics, it would be expedient to “denounce the lease of the reserve with the current tenant”, concluded for a period up to 2054, and “return the buildings of the shrine to their rightful owners – those who erected the structures and provided the main impetus to the development of the monastery.”

Taking into account the official opinion of the UGCC, the head of the Ternopil Regional Council Mikhail Golovko, who had previously invited the head of the OCU Epifaniy to serve in the Lavra, noted that he considers the first task “the need to ban the Moscow Patriarchate in Ukraine, which acts as a branch of a hostile political system and special services, to expel the fifth column, to overcome, first of all, the spiritual enemy – the cause of discord. And then the state, through the relevant ministries, in dialogue with society, will determine which property to return to which denomination in order to satisfy truth and justice.”