DESS demand for Pochaiv Lavra to leave UOC is absurd, "Myriany" rep says
Tetiana Tsaruk countered officials' attacks with the many-thousand-strong pilgrimage of believers to Pochaiv.
Tetiana Tsaruk, head of the Rivne branch of the public union "Myriany" ("Laity") decribed as madness the demand of the State Service of Ukraine for Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Conscience (DESS) that the Pochaiv Lavra leave the UOC.
The head of the Rivne branch of "Myriany" called the officials' demands madness, as they are attempting to force the monastery to cease being part of the UOC and turn it into "something unknown," and cited examples of attacks on the shrine by radical activists who call the monastery a threat to national security.
In particular, public figure Bohdan Yatsikovsky openly called for the monastery to be closed and the monks expelled, referring to the Lavra as a "stronghold of the Russian world" whose existence in the west of the country is unacceptable. Tsaruk noted that rather than interfering in church matters, officials and bloggers should pray for peace on Ukrainian soil.
The real response of believers to intimidation and pressure was a tens-of-thousands-strong pilgrimage on the feast day of the Pochaiv Icon of the Mother of God, celebrated on August 5. Despite enormous pressure, thousands of pilgrims walked hundreds of kilometers on foot and filled Pochaiv Hill to defend their faith.
Many of them slept in tents due to the lack of space in the Lavra's guesthouses. The head of the Rivne branch called this triumph of faith "an island of joy, peace, and prayer."
As the UOJ reported, the Pochaiv Nature Reserve contacted the police over the religious procession to the Lavra.
