Kiev, March 2, 2026
Dumenko in the Near Caves. Photo: Facebook
The desecration of the Holy Dormition-Kiev Caves Lavra and the holy relics it houses is accelerating.
On February 24, Epiphany Dumenko, the head of the graceless and schismatic “Orthodox Church of Ukraine,” celebrated a service in the Lavra’s Exaltation of the Cross Church, which state authorities had seized control of just a week prior, forcing out the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church under His Beatitude Metropolitan Onuphry of Kiev and All Ukraine.
The same fate befell the Church of the Venerable Fathers of the Caves, leaving the UOC to celebrate only in the Church of St. Agapit, which actually sits outside the monastery walls.
During his service, Dumenko announced the lamentable fate of the Near Caves: “From this day forward, the monastic community of the Ukrainian Lavra receives into its full care the shrines of the Near Caves of Anthony, to continue here its prayer and ministry to God and the faithful. To carry on the work whose beginnings were laid in these caves by the founder of the monastery nearly a millennium ago.”
Dumenko is referring to the handful of monks in the OCU’s alternative brotherhood under Avraamy Latish, who apostatized from the Orthodox Church in order to head a new Lavra brotherhood and become a bishop.
It is notable that Dumenko presented this development as a continuation of the Church’s return to the Lavra in 1988 and the restoration of the Holy Dormition Cathedral, while those events happened under the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which his group violently persecutes, and thus have no connection to his OCU.
The Kiev Caves Lavra is divided into the Upper and Lower Lavra, with the Near and Far Caves located in the Lower Lavra, which was inexplicably closed to the public in August 2023, which therefore forced out the Kiev Theological Schools that were housed there.
The state authorities who have controlled the Lavra since Soviet times have recently permitted Dumenko to serve within the Caves themselves, and the Near Caves are now open by appointment only.
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