“We don’t even believe that the Pochaiv Lavra is a shrine of the Ukrainian people, the government doesn’t believe in it either… because I don’t see concrete actions concerning the Pochaiv Lavra.”
This was stated by OCU Metropolitan Mykhail (Zinkevych) of Lutsk and Volyn during the All-Ukrainian scientific conference “Pochaiv Lavra and its influence on the formation of Ukrainian Orthodox identity”, writes the Spiritual Eminence of Lviv.
The event was timed to the 90th anniversary of the Ukrainian manifestation (September 1933), which took place under the slogan “The Pochaiv Lavra must be Ukrainian.”
First of all, Bishop Mykhail emphasized that he is one of the few who has a direct relationship with the Lavra: “I was a monk at this Lavra, I was a cellist of the Vicar of the Holy Dormition Pochaiv Lavra, and the life of the Lavra is not as foreign to me as the Lavra itself. Although I was born literally a few kilometers from the Lavra.”
The metropolitan then noted that the Pochaiv Lavra is “a Ukrainian shrine of the Ukrainian people.” “It truly does not belong to anyone, it belongs to everyone, and the peculiarity of this shrine, first of all, is that it is the only place in the world that stores a foot of the Mother of God, it is a special place because of its deep asceticism…”.
The Metropolitan of Volyn does not see the purpose of discussing the question of who the Pochaiv Lavra should belong to: “First of all, we must assert ourselves – because we do not even believe that the Pochaiv Lavra is a shrine of the Ukrainian people, and the government does not believe I don’t see any specific actions concerning the Pochaiv Lavra.”
Bishop Mykhail asks the question: if the Lavra is a Ukrainian shrine, then “what is the Moscow Patriarchate doing there?”
The Metropolitan wished everyone to realize that Ukrainian shrines belong to the Ukrainian people.
