Expert: Lavra monks have a choice: OCU, Phanar, or Russia
Filippovych stated that the monks of the Lavra were offered three options for action – transfer to the OCU, Phanar, or leave for the Russian Federation.
The brethren of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra may remain in the monastery if they transfer to the OCU or ask the Phanar for stauropegia. Otherwise, they will have to follow the "suitcase, station, Russia" formula, Liudmyla Filippovych, a member of the State Ethnic Policy Commission on the UOC, said on the air of 1 + 1.
Filippovych noted that there would be no legal problems in the event of the transition of the monks of the UOC to the OCU.
“The options have already been proposed. There is such an option that they choose their rector and can ask for stauropegia from the Ecumenical Patriarchate if they are so terribly unwilling to join the OCU. <...> And for those who do not like either option, we have an excellent formula – "suitcase, station, Russia",” the religious expert said.
According to her, among the clergy of the UOC there are many priests who did not accept "the model of democratic development, receiving tomos and the OCU."
Filippovych, in turn, addressed those who remained faithful to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church: “No one is keeping you in Ukraine.”
At the same time, she expressed the hope that the inhabitants "will make the right, not corporate, but important Christian decision."
As the UOJ reported, Metropolitan Pavel, the abbot of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra, said that the brethren would not leave the Lavra of their own free will.
