OCU receives Holy Fire from the hands of Boryspil airport employee

Epiphanius Dumenko receives the Holy Fire. Photo: pomisna.info

On April 19, 2020, the head of the OCU Epiphanius Dumenko received the Holy Fire at the Kiev-Vydubychi St. Michael Monastery in the capital from the hands of the Boryspil airport employee, the official website of the OCU reports.

According to the OCU, the Holy Light was delivered to Kiev "with the assistance of UIA and the Ukrainian Embassy in Israel."

The airline posted a video on its Facebook page in which the crew of the aircraft take out an amphora with the Holy Fire from the air show and pass it on to the Boryspil airport employee.

The UIA press service reported that “on Sunday morning, the UIA Boeing-767 aircraft delivered an amphora with the Holy Fire from Tel Aviv to Kiev in the morning. Valuable cargo will be handed over to representatives of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine to celebrate Easter services at St. Michael’s Golden-Domed Cathedral and other temples.”

The message is posted on UIA's official Facebook page on April 19 at 10:29 a.m.

However, based on the information on the flightaware.com website, which contains information about all flights, it can be concluded that on April 19, Boryspil Airport did not accommodate planes departing from the Israeli David Ben Gurion Airport.

The day before, on April 18, there were two flights from Tel Aviv to Boryspil. One of them (arrived at 18:44) delivered the Holy Fire to Ukraine via the UOC delegation.

The second plane (Boeing 787-9), which arrived at 23:13, belongs to the Israeli company El Al and has nothing to do with UIA.

Earlier, the UOJ wrote that “metropolitan” Epiphanius had invited the authorities to either bring the Holy Fire for all Churches or not to bring it at all and spend the money on charity instead.

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