Head of the Communications Department of the UGCC Igor Yatsiv said that the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church claims to have a prayerful and physical presence in the Pochaev Lavra, Espresso.Zapad reports.
“The position of our church is based on historical sources that Greek Catholics prayed in the Pochaev Lavra. Greek Catholics were forcibly expelled from the entire left-bank part of Ukraine under Tsarist Russia. We did not leave the Pochaev Lavra voluntarily,” said the speaker of the UGCC.
Igor Yatsiv clarified that this is not about the right of ownership of the complex of structures, but about the ability to use it, but “on a sustainable basis, as it happened in relation to the UOC-MP, on the basis of contracts.”
The representative of the UGCC also assured that if the state does not make a positive decision for the UGCC, no one will organize “crusades”. And he added: “We simply testified our right to be there, so that later it would not turn out that we were silent, and therefore we were not given anything.”