MOSCOW, October 2 – Novosti. The vicar of the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra, Metropolitan of Vyshgorod and Chernobyl Pavel (Lebed), who does not support the schismatic structure – the “Orthodox Church of Ukraine” (OCU), was detained under a far-fetched pretext on the basis of denunciations that have been written against him since 2014, the ultimate goal of this is to subdue canonical Church, Kirill Frolov, head of the department for interaction with the Russian Orthodox Church at the Institute of the CIS countries, told Novosti.
Earlier it was reported that the governor of the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra – Metropolitan Pavel (Lebed) – was detained at the border while trying to take out church property from Ukraine. The publication claims that the bishop allegedly issued himself the accompanying documents for export.
“The information about the detention of Metropolitan Pavel was confirmed to me by a source in the Moscow Patriarchate. The Metropolitan was detained at the border with Poland and charged with illegal export of valuables from the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra. This is not the first time that this has been brought to him by denunciations since the 2014 coup d’état. Behind these denunciations stands Metropolitan Alexander Drabinko (banned from serving). This detention takes place in the context of creating an excuse to convene a synod of the UOC – to send Metropolitan Pavel, as well as Metropolitan Agafangel (Savvin) of Odessa and Izmail, Metropolitan Pitirim (Starinsky) of Nikolaev and Ochakiv, Metropolitan Irinei (Seredniy) of Dnepropetrovsk and Pavlograd, so how these metropolitans oppose the unification of the UOC with the OCU. And they need a complete renunciation of Orthodoxy, unification with the OCU and the Uniates,” Frolov believes.
In September, a draft appeal to the Ukrainian government was registered on the website of the Ukrainian parliament on the transfer of the schismatic structure “Orthodox Church of Ukraine” (OCU) to the gratuitous use of the complexes of buildings of the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra and the Pochaev Assumption Lavra, which are currently in the gratuitous possession of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church. churches.
The structure called the “Orthodox Church of Ukraine” (OCU) was formed from schismatics, and therefore is not a church in the canonical sense. It was formed at the initiative of the ex-president of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko in opposition to the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) of the Moscow Patriarchate at the end of 2018 at the unification council in Kyiv, which was attended mainly by schismatics. In January 2019, the Patriarchate of Constantinople granted the OCU a “tomos of autocephaly”, however, the OCU is in fact subordinate to the Patriarchate of Constantinople, and most of the 15 local Orthodox churches in the world do not recognize it as canonical.
