Hundreds of believers attended a historic Orthodox Christmas service on Saturday, January 7, at the famous monastery of the Lavra of the Caves in Kiev, which used to depend on the Moscow Patriarchate but was transferred to Ukraine because of the war. .
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In 2018-2019, Metropolitan Epiphany, the head of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, created after the break with the Russian Church, celebrated the Christmas mass for the first time in the Assumption Cathedral of this 11th-century monastery, which is the largest in the country. Believers, including men in military uniforms, gathered under a heavy police presence, AFP journalists noted.
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A few quests
Believers had to show their passports and pass through the metal detector gates. The monastery in the Ukrainian capital was the seat of a branch of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church under the Moscow Patriarchate, which severed ties with Russia in May.
Despite this distance, the branch’s leaders are under pressure from Ukrainian authorities, who in recent weeks have conducted several raids on religious buildings and punished clerics for their pro-Russian stance.
A 36-hour unilateral ceasefire
The Kiev Lavra of Caves, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, was also attacked. In December, the monastery was transferred to the jurisdiction of the Ukrainian Independent Church of the Moscow Patriarchate.
On the occasion of the Orthodox Christmas holiday, which is celebrated in Ukraine as in Russia, President Vladimir Putin ordered his forces to observe a unilateral 36-hour ceasefire. Military operations, however, continued on Friday in several points of the front, even if their intensity was less compared to the previous days.
Source: Le Figaro
I am David Wyatt, a professional writer and journalist for Buna Times. I specialize in the world section of news coverage, where I bring to light stories and issues that affect us globally. As a graduate of Journalism, I have always had the passion to spread knowledge through writing.