Expert: If the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra is given to the OCU, people will not come there

German religious expert, sociologist Nikolai Mitrokhin said in an interview with Important Stories that the decision of the Ukrainian authorities not to extend the lease agreement for the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra is a gross violation of the believers’ rights. Up to 1.5 thousand people attend the Refectory Church for Sunday liturgies, 600 – the Assumption Church.

“Such a number of believers simply cannot be accommodated in other churches of the UOC in the Lavra – they are smaller and they are packed to capacity. In total, according to my research, up to 2.5 thousand people attend Sunday liturgies in the temples of the Lavra. And now most of them are deprived of the opportunity to pray in the temples they are used to,” the religious scholar noted.

Mitrokhin also commented on the possibility of transferring the Lavra to the OCU. He believes that in this case the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra will be empty.

“In order to exploit the Lavra, monastics are needed. The OCU has practically no monastics. It can scrape together from all the monasteries and deliver as many as twenty people there to make up the top of the administration,” he said.

“Thousands of people from all over Kyiv and all over Ukraine come to the Lavra every day to pray, buy candles, make donations. These people come not because the Lavra is a Lavra, but because it is the spiritual center of the UOC for them. And if those whom they consider renovationists, conventionally speaking, start to administer in the Lavra, people simply will not come there. Church life will move to some sketes, small churches, where all these Lavra brethren will disperse,” the expert is sure.

As the UOJ reported, the head of the Legal Department of the UOC, Archpriest Alexander Bakhov, said that the Church would challenge the refusal to extend the lease of the Upper Lavra churches in court.