For “promoting” Russia 200 Ukraine Orthodox monks to be evicted

RELIGIONS NEWS AGENCY (REDNA) – Two hundred Orthodox monks at the Pecherska Lavra (Monastery of the Caves) in Ukraine, are to be evicted by Wednesday next week.

They are accused of promoting the “ideology of a Russian space”.

The monastery is part of the Moscow aligned Ukrainian Orthodox Church  and has appealed to President Zelensky for protection.

The new independent Ukraine Orthodox church, aligned to Constantinople, said it had tried to persuade the remaining leaders of the Moscow aligned church to end its link to Russia, to no avail.

The courtyards of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra have been busy with more than just the usual worshippers, going to and from its churches in the sprawling monastic complex that is Ukraine’s most revered Orthodox site.

Also busy Friday were people in civilian clothes, loading cars with plasma televisions, furniture and other items from the buildings — helping the resident monks remove belongings of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, or UOC, before a threatened government eviction on March 29.

There also were police officers checking the cars to make sure no one was removing items that belong to the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra preserve, which oversees the complex.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine is reverberating here in a struggle for control of the Lavra, known in English as the Monastery of the Caves. The complex contains church, monastic and museum buildings; its oldest parts date back to the dawn of Christianity here a millennium ago.

The Moscow based Russian Orthodox church led by Patriarch Kirill has supported Putin and the war in Ukraine.