Atrocities of neo-communists in the Lavra

Isaac the Hermit. Photo: Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra website

On March 28, 2025 – deliberately timed to fall on the eve of the anniversary (March 29, 2023) when Ukraine’s authorities issued their infamous ultimatum to the UOC to abandon the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra – the government has chosen to carry on the “glorious” legacy of Soviet Bolsheviks by launching a grotesque campaign to open the relics of saints. Backed by police and agents of the SBU, a commission from the Ministry of Culture descended upon the Lavra. Acting on an order signed by Minister Mykola Tochytskyi, it was taksed to “determine the historical and scientific value of the remains of the saints and compile the appropriate documentation.”

Let’s be absolutely clear – this is a modern replay of the same sacrilege the communists carried out in the 1920s.

Back then, they desecrated relics under the pretext of “research”. For them, the holy was a myth, the sacred a lie, and relics nothing more than artifacts to be poked and prodded. They trampled on the idea of sanctity, sneering at the very notion of divine grace, and laughed at the belief that the Holy Spirit dwells not only in the souls but in the very bodies of God’s saints – even after death.

They treated saints' relics as museum curiosities, as dried-up corpses to be displayed or debunked – never with the reverence and awe that every true believer knows they deserve. Their aim? To mock, to destroy, and to humiliate the faith of millions.

And now – isn’t that precisely what we’re seeing unfold again?

Some may try to defend the current government – say they’re being respectful, careful, mindful of believers' feelings. But just read the order. These relics are not being opened for veneration, or prayer, or liturgical reasons. No – they’re being dissected to assess their “historical and scientific” value.

Just look at the people they chose for the job:

• the president of Ukraine’s Society of Anatomists, Histologists, Embryologists, and Topographic Anatomists;
• a biological research fellow;
• a human anatomy professor;
• and – yes – a veterinarian, head of the Department of Vertebrate Biomorphology.

Vertebrates? Is that what the saints of the Kyiv Caves have been reduced to in the eyes of these “experts”? Men whose incorrupt bodies and radiant holiness are venerated by the entire Orthodox world – by Greeks, Russians, Serbs, Georgians, Romanians, and countless others – now treated like biological specimens? Like animals to be studied under a lab light?

With a single government decree, the authorities have unmasked themselves. This is how they view the faith of the Ukrainian people. This is how they view the relics that generations of believers have approached on their knees, in tears, in prayer.

There is no urgent need for this kind of “inspection.” No pastoral reason. No spiritual cause. Only one chilling objective: to see what Orthodox Christians will do. Will they protest? Will they resist? Or will they remain silent while their faith is desecrated?

This is not an administrative act. It is a spiritual provocation.

Will we watch in silence while they pry open the reliquaries of saints – or will we stand as one in their defense?

Venerable Fathers of the Kyiv Caves, intercede for us before God!

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