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Commentary of the DECR UOC in connection with the appeal of the head of the OCU to the monks of the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra

On March 18, 2023, the head of the OCU, Epifaniy (Dumenko), appealed to the brethren of the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra of the UOC with a call to move to the OCU.

In this regard, we consider it necessary to report the following.

We remind you that the monks of the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra themselves gave a response to such statements by Epifaniy on January 27, 2023, where they stated that “we were, are and will be in Truth and are faithful to our canonical Church and its Primate – His Beatitude Metropolitan Onufry” and in the OCU won’t go.

Monks who are citizens of Ukraine live in the Lavra. Ukrainians live in the Lavra, Ukrainian monasticism, and not Russian, as it is often falsely said in our media. “The power of the Moscow Patriarchate” in the Lavra was not and is not.

The manipulation and cunning of this appeal is that, on the one hand, the author declares the need to expel the “Moscow Patriarchate” from the Lavra, to which he obviously refers the Lavra monks, but if the OCU receives the Lavra, then the monks, previously, according to the head of the OCU, were “Moscow ”, will turn into “Ukrainian” and will be able to stay there. Also in the appeal, Epifaniy declares his readiness to even allow the monks to pray in the “ancient Slavic language”, if only they remain in the Lavra, because everyone knows that there are few of their own monks in the OCU. In fact, on the shoulders of the monks of the monastery of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, the head of the OCU wants to go to the Lavra and take advantage of their many years of work, appropriating them to his structure.

 

In addition, at the beginning of his address, the author claims that finally “the Ukrainian Church is returning to the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra.” This is not true, because in all church and state documents it is written that it is the Ukrainian Orthodox Church that performs divine services in the Lavra today. Not a single official church and state document contains the words “Moscow Church” or “Moscow Patriarchate”. This is an artificially created cliché in the media, designed to divide Ukrainians and, unfortunately, it does it successfully. In the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, it is not the Russian, but the Ukrainian clergy who perform their ministry.

We consider false accusations that allegedly the Lavra “consistently and deliberately turned into a propaganda center for the ideology of the ‘Russian world’, that the Lavra is allegedly an instrument of struggle against Ukraine.” These are artificially invented clichés that have been stubbornly spread for years by the enemies of our Church.

The eviction of the monks from the Lavra provokes the Russians to continue to “protect the Orthodox”, giving them more and more arguments to justify their aggression against Ukraine, as the press secretary of the Russian President D. Peskov recently stated, making it clear that “the eviction of the monks from the Lavra . justifies the goals of the special operation. Therefore, when Epifaniy declares that “the enemy is using this historical event to split Ukrainian unity and sow misunderstandings between us,” the question arises, who actually gives the enemy reasons for this by such decisions and actions?

In addition, if in the OCU “hearts were open for unity,” as the author of the appeal states, they would first condemn the violence against our communities that they are committing today almost throughout Ukraine, and now they slyly call for “unity”.

We want to remind, and we will always keep this memory, that the real, historical and traditional Church of Ukraine is our Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which has more than 1000 years of history, while the OCU was created only 4 years ago from those parts, about 30 years ago they broke away from our Church, namely the UOC-KP and the UAOC.

The pressure of the authorities on our Church, artificial obstacles in its activities and the potential ban on the UOC will not contribute to the restoration of unity and dialogue with the OCU, to which they call us.

We believe that the intention to take the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra from the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and evict its inhabitants is a violation of the right to freedom of religion and a big mistake that will have a destructive effect on the image of our state, on the unity of the Ukrainian people and the religious world.

Department of External Church Relations of the UOC

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