Swiss cleric: His Beatitude Onuphry is a saint, these are not just words

His Beatitude Metropolitan Onuphry and Samuil Milko (to the left of the Primate) at the prayer standing near the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra. Photo: UOJ

The reader of the Orthodox church of St. Nicholas in the city of Basel (Switzerland) Samuil Milko said in an interview to the website of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra that when meeting with His Beatitude Metropolitan Onuphry, he felt the holiness of Vladyka.

“I didn’t speak to him personally, but I touched him twice and received a blessing,” said the cleric. “Once – when he served a prayer service at the exit from the Lavra, on the front line, so to speak, and the second time – at a greeting after the Easter service, when he congratulated the brethren, students of the seminary, and then I gave him a rosary, which I tied at the relics of the Lavra’s Venerable Fathers. <...> Of course, I would very much like to meet him again, but still these moments are enough for me to know that he really is a saint, and these are not just words.

According to Samuel, next to His Beatitude Onufry, "the soul feels amazing calmness, peace."

“In the Lavra, I felt this twice: at the relics of the monks, where I lost contact with earthly reality, and the second time, when I stood at the prayer service behind His Beatitude Onuphry, when I touched his hand and received a blessing,” said Samuil Milko.

As the UOJ wrote, earlier the bishops of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church spoke about their impressions of their interaction with His Beatitude Metropolitan Onuphry.

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