Claims on terminating lease with UOC communities in Lavras being prepared

Holy Dormition Kiev-Pechersk Lavra

Ukrainian mass media reported that the management of the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra Museum and the Kremenets-Pochaev State Historical and Architectural Reserve received instructions from the Presidential Administration to prepare claims to the administrative courts on termination of the lease by the UOC communities. This is reported by "Vesti", citing its own source, close to the ex-deputy head of the AP and now Presidential Advisor Rostislav Pavlenko.

“Due to the sensitivity of the issue, everything must be carried out secretly so as not to receive a negative public response in advance. Also, since December 26, the Department for Religions and Nationalities has been instructing the commissioners in the regions to organize statistics of transfer to the OCU,” the edition said.

As the UOJ reported, earlier experts have repeatedly stressed that after the “Unification Council” the difficult situation around the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church would only worsen.

We recall that on November 28, the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine decided to return the Pochaev Lavra to the Historic-Architectural Kremenets-Pochaev Reserve. On November 30, representatives of the Security Service of Ukraine conducted searches in the house belonging to the abbot of the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra Metropolitan Pavel of Vyshgorod and Chernobyl and in the monastery's subsidiary farm. On December 3, searches were conducted in the cathedrals, buildings, temples, and houses of priests of the Zhitomir and Ovruch eparchies of the UOC; and on December 5, the SBU Office summoned the clergymen of the Rovno and Sarny eparchies for questioning. The Main Directorate of the National Police of Ukraine in the Zhitomir Region reported that searches were carried out as part of the investigation of the same criminal case, which was initiated under the article on inciting ethnic hatred. On December 22, 2018, Petro Poroshenko signed anti-church bill No. 5309, which obliges the Ukrainian Orthodox Church to change its name as the Church “whose governing centre is in the aggressor country” and become the “Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine”.

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