Petition not to evict monks from Lavra appears on Cabinat’s website

The Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra

On 16 March, the website of the Cabinet of Ministers registered a petition urging not to evict UOC monks from the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra. The author of the petition, Nadiya Shevchyk, calls on the Cabinet of Ministers to review the decision to break the agreement on the provision of state property to the monks on a free-of-charge basis.

"The current inhabitants of the Lavra crossed its threshold back in 1988 during the Soviet repressive era and raised the shrine from ruins. Many of them have laid their lives and health on it. The brutal eviction of the Lavra monks is an act of great injustice", the petition reads.

The authors of the petition also say that "stopping the work of the Kyiv Theological Academy and the seminary of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which are on the territory of the Lavra and evicting the students from there is beyond morality and justice".

The petition asks the Cabinet of Ministers to "protect the fundamental rights and freedoms of Ukrainian citizens, the current inhabitants of the Lavra and to make an inventory of the buildings that are on the balance of the sanctuary with recommendations for their maintenance and care, without evicting the Lavra brethren headed by its holy archimandrite, Metropolitan Onuphry".

The petition has already been signed by 243 people out of the required 25,000.

As reported, the abbot and the Lavra clergy asked the President, the Cabinet of Ministers and the people to let the monks stay in the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra and allow them to continue praying for the country and Ukrainians.

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