MP from Poroshenko party demands to give Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra to OCU

The people's deputy demands to immediately take away the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra from the UOC. Photo: a video screenshot from Alexei Goncharenko’s Youtube channel

On June 22, 2020, the deputy from the “Euro-Solidarity” party Alexei Goncharenko published a video demanding that the Holy Dormition Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra should be transferred immediately to the OCU, because "this issue is long overdue".

“This is one of the symbols of our state, it is more than a shrine, maybe even the main symbol of Ukraine and Kyiv,” Goncharenko said. “Today this symbol is not in Ukrainian hands. Unfortunately, this object is in the hands of the Moscow Church, whose governing body is in the aggressor country, in Moscow – the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate, which is correctly called the Russian Orthodox Church. We understand that it has become a hotbed of non-Ukrainian and not pro-Ukrainian ideas. The crown virus of the Russian Empire is actively spreading there.”

In the monastery, he said, “there are many other difficulties – illegal construction, theft of valuable icons”, but “the most important thing is that the anti-Ukrainian virus is spreading there, and now during the epidemic, the Lavra has become the centre of the spread of coronavirus”.

The deputy emphasized that the issue of transferring the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra, which is state property, to the OCU, is “long overdue” and now, moreover, “some kind of idiotic case is opened” against Petro Poroshenko, ex-president and leader of “Euro-Solidarity” .

“In 2018, we experienced a historic moment – we received a tomos and founded such a long-awaited independent Orthodox Church of Ukraine. This happened contrary to all the ill-wishers. When the monastery was founded on the Pechersk hills, Moscow did not exist, nothing existed, in those places there was only a swamp and forest. And the whole history of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra is the history of Ukraine, but not the history of Russia and the Russian Orthodox Church. This is the story of the Ukrainian Church and Ukrainian Orthodoxy. We must return the status of the third Rome to Kyiv, and for this the Orthodox Church of Ukraine must administer the key shrines of Ukraine, the main of which is the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra,” Goncharenko said in his video message and added to his comment that “to return the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra is our first goal”.

UOJ readers recalled that in 2010, Alexei Goncharenko, advocating for the "long-awaited independent Orthodox Church of Ukraine", attended the Patriarchal Liturgy at the Transfiguration Cathedral of the UOC in Odessa, which the Primate of the Russian Orthodox Church celebrated in congregation with His Beatitude Metropolitan Onuphry and the host of hierarchs.

As reported, on June 18, 2020, Petro Poroshenko, the leader of the “Euro-Solidarity” party, stated that a criminal case had been brought against him because of the Tomos. The OCU said that the current criminal case against Petro Poroshenko "is a shameful and absurd attempt to put pressure on the Orthodox Church of Ukraine".

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