Kiev, July 15, 2026
Epiphany Dumenko, head of the schismatics “Orthodox Church of Ukraine” (OCU), has called for the Kiev Caves Lavra to be rebuilt as what he describes as a prominent “pan-Christian shrine.”
Dumenko made the remarks on July 14, during a moleben for Ukraine held at the Nativity of the Most Holy Theotokos Church within the Lavra, the OCU press service reports.
The Lavra has stood for 1,000 years, not as a pan-Christian shrine, but as a bulwark of holy Orthodoxy.
Attending the service alongside OCU “clergy” and members of its alternative Lavra brotherhood were monks from New Esphigmenou Monastery on Mt. Athos, as well as Ukrainian government officials. (New Esphigmenou Monastery was crreated on Mount Athos by Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople as a loyalist alternative to the old Esphigmenou, where the brotherhood does not commemorate him.)
Dumenko characterized the longstanding traditions of the Lavra as the spirit of the “Russian world” that must be eliminated.
The Lavra, which was restored from ruins over the course of three decades by the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church, has been at the center of an ongoing effort by the Ukrainian state and the OCU to remove the Church from the premises. Dumenko’s call for its “revival and reconstruction” comes as that campaign has been the very thing to jeopardize the continued existence of the monastery.
His statement comes a week after Maksim Ostapenko, General Director of the state-run Kiev Caves Lavra National Preserve, lamented that the presence of Orthodox monks at the monastery hinders tourism there. Ostapenko was also present at the July 14 moleben.
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