Kyiv: Priests should evacuate cave monasteries

About 200 monks and 400 seminarians from the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) should have left the Kiev Cave Monastery by midnight. But the clergy want to stay and are supported by numerous believers.

The Ukrainian government had set the deadline for March 29. Their accusation weighs heavily: the clergy in the cave monastery collaborated with the Russian state, as members of the UOC they are canonically part of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC).

It is correct: Patriarch Kirill, the head of the ROK, supports President Vladimir Putin and is close to the state. The Russian head of state often happily appears in public with Russian Orthodox priests, including recently when visiting the parts of Ukraine occupied by Russia. ROK clergymen bless the weapons of the army that brought untold suffering to Ukraine and also destroyed sacred buildings of all denominations in Ukraine.

Incomplete detachment from the Moscow Patriarch?

But the UOK had distanced itself from Patriarch Kirill after February 24, 2022, i.e. the large-scale attack by Russia on Ukraine. She has reaffirmed her independence and removed the addition “Moscow Patriarchate” from her name. Last May, in a new statute, it described itself as independent, but not as “autocephalous”. The latter would have meant complete detachment from the ROC in orthodox Christianity.

Still, seminarians at the spiritual academy, located in the Kiev Pechersk Lavra, recently released a video reaffirming their loyalty to the Ukrainian state. In it, they refer to their brothers and other family members who are fighting at the front against the Russian occupiers and risking their lives there. The head of the UOC, Metropolitan Onufri, has tried several times to clarify the matter with President Volodymyr Zelensky, so far in vain.

The cave monastery is actually a kind of monastery complex with around 140 buildings. Most Eastern Europeans call it “lawra” – in Christian orthodoxy a kind of honorific title for a monastery. The cave monastery founded in the 11th century is undisputedly the most important orthodox national shrine. Before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, hundreds of thousands of believers visited the Lavra every year. Most Ukrainians, like Russians, Serbs, Greeks, Romanians, Georgians or Bulgarians, profess the Christian Orthodox faith, although there are different, sometimes competing churches.

Reason for dismissal: breach of contract or espionage?

As in Soviet times, the monastery complex is owned by the state. And the Ukrainian government determines who can use the monastery. Minister of Culture Olexander Tkachenko has terminated the lease with the UOK. The UOK is suing against this. The Minister of Culture objects that the clergy have erected new buildings in the monastery or renovated existing ones, which corresponds to the facts. However, Tkachenko is of the opinion that they would have violated the user agreement.

In reality, the suspicion that members of the UOC are secretly working for the “other side”, ie for Russia, weighs more heavily. Last fall, security services searched the cave monastery several times for suspicious material. President Zelenskyy is striving for Ukraine’s “spiritual independence,” he announced last December: Nobody should build an “empire in the Ukrainian soul.”

Will another religious community take over the monastery?

Many experts believe that nothing damages the UOC’s reputation more than vocal support from Moscow Patriarch Kirill or Russian officials. In the meantime, the head of the Georgian Orthodox Church, Ilija II, has protested against the threatened expulsion of the clergy from the cave monastery. The Serbian Orthodox Patriarch Porfirye called Kiev’s actions against the monks “state terror”.

However, the Ukrainian government points out that services in the monastery would continue after the UOC clergy left the Lavra. Instead, religious of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OKU) would move into the Lavra. Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople (Istanbul) granted the religious community “autocephaly” in December 2018 and thus – against Moscow’s resistance – canonized it, i.e. gave it official status.

The coming hours and days will show whether the protests of the faithful or other orthodox churches will lead to the UOC clergy being allowed to stay in the cave monastery. There are countless examples in Ukraine where representatives of the OKU have already taken over churches and other buildings from the UOK, often with the support of state authorities. However, representatives of the Ukrainian government have assured that there will be no violent evacuation of the monastery complex.