Pochaev, Ukraine, August 25, 2022
vsim.ua
Every year, Ukrainian Orthodox faithful undertake a multi-day procession, traveling hundreds of miles from Kamenets-Podolsk to the Pochaev Lavra for its patronal feast of the Dormition of the Mother of God.
Due to the state of martial law in Ukraine, the Kamenets-Podolsk Diocese didn’t officially organize the pilgrimage this year. Nevertheless, about 7,000 Orthodox faithful decided to make the prayer walk themselves.
However, they have been met by resistance from enemies of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in various places.
According to the Diocese of Chernivtsi and Bukovina, residents of two villages in the Ternopil Province met the procession with pickets, forcing the processers to backtrack and go around the villages. This greatly increased the length of the procession, while the prayerful participants didn’t have enough food and water.
Nevertheless, the faithful met all curses with shouts of “Christ is Risen!”
The procession was also prevented from passing through Volochisk, Khmelnytsky Province, on Tuesday. Activists, local deputies, and the territorial defense blocked the entrance to the city and “recommended” that the procession find another route.
MP Vladimir Aryev wrote on social media that since some of the pilgrims are physically fit, there’s no way to be sure they aren’t saboteurs of the Moscow Patriarchate. Others criticized the faithful for carrying icons of the Royal Martyrs Tsar Nicholas II and his family, or for supposedly praying in Russian, not knowing that prayers are actually read in Church Slavonic.
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