Dumenko: Pochaiv will be ours, and Sviatohirsk Lavra is no Lavra

Serhii Dumenko. Photo: OCU

In an interview with Radio Liberty, OCU head Serhii Dumenko said that Pochaiv and Sviatohirsk Lavras would eventually come under his organization’s control. At the same time, he questioned Sviatohirsk Monastery’s status as a lavra, saying it should not be called one.

“Yes, of course, changes will definitely take place,” Dumenko said when asked whether Pochaiv Lavra would join the OCU. “It is a gradual process, moving in a wave from western Ukraine toward the central and eastern regions.”

According to Dumenko, there are no UOC communities left in the Lviv and Ivano-Frankivsk regions, while several dozen remain in the Ternopil region, all concentrated around Pochaiv Lavra, which he described as “the last stronghold of the Russian Church in western Ukraine.”

“But no one believed that the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra would belong to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine either. Circumstances will arise in which Pochaiv Lavra will also…” the OCU head said, leaving his sentence unfinished.

Dumenko was even more categorical about Sviatohirsk Lavra.

“Why do we call it a lavra? Because at one point, the Russian Church granted it lavra status to please Yanukovych. It is one of the major monasteries in eastern Ukraine,” he said.

Nevertheless, Dumenko expressed confidence that Sviatohirsk, like Pochaiv, would eventually become part of the OCU.

“It takes time. I am convinced that the Lord will create the conditions under which these holy sites, so important to the Ukrainian people, will also belong to the genuine, recognized autocephalous Ukrainian Church.”

It should be recalled that Sviatohirsk Monastery was granted lavra status on March 9, 2004, by the Holy Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. The OCU head did not explain what role Viktor Yanukovych, who was prime minister at the time, had played in that decision.

Earlier, the UOJ reported that the OCU had established a fictitious entity called the “Pochaiv Monastery.”

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