Blasphemy against the relics in the Lavra

Reserve staff drying the vestments of the Venerable Fathers. Photo: Fortress Lavra

On August 19, 2025, shocking photographs emerged: staff of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra museum dragging reliquaries with the relics of the Venerable Fathers of the Caves out into the courtyard, treating them like mere objects, and performing profane manipulations with them. Relics that, for centuries, the faithful were allowed to venerate only rarely and with trembling reverence, were exposed and handled as though they were museum curiosities. And this desecration took place precisely on the radiant feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord.

The darkest warnings voiced months ago, when the Ministry of Culture created its commission to “verify the presence of relics,” are now being fulfilled. The parallels with the sacrilegious campaign of the 1920s, when Bolshevik commissars cracked open reliquaries, “examined” the relics, and mocked the saints, are becoming terrifyingly real.

Nothing in this world happens without consequence. History and the memory of the people preserve countless accounts of how those who dared to raise their hands against the holy things – together with their descendants – were struck down with bitter and tragic fates.

Even today, as churches are seized, there are already cases of sudden deaths occurring at the very scene of these crimes.

Ukraine is enduring a most grievous and tragic chapter of her history. Now more than ever, we must pray and cry out for the intercession of the Venerable Fathers on behalf of our people and our land. Yet instead, the authorities treat them as lifeless mummies, desecrating them with shameless blasphemy.

And the answer of the Venerable Fathers will be fitting albeit terrible. The tragedy is that for the sacrilege of these “intercessors,” the whole nation may have to bear the punishment.

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