Bishop Kliment of Irpen: the service of the Kiev Patriarchate in the Kiev Pechersk Lavra is a provocation of outcasts
March 13, 2017 – The service held by the Kiev Patriarchate in the Kiev Pechersk Lavra is not linked to the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church and is a provocation attempt.
“What we witnessed in the Uspensk Cathedral of the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra can hardly be called a church service. It was clearly a provocation from the so-called ‘Kiev-Patriarchate’. During a touristic excursion, a group of people entered the church, and afterwards they began a church service with seditious demands in their prayers. When they were told that church services of such kind must be agreed upon with the priesthood, they physically assaulted the clergy of the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra”, reported Bishop Kliment.
The main goal of the assailants was diffusing a video recording on the Internet. “Their goal wasn’t to conduct a prayer, nor to receive any spiritual guidance from the Uspensk Cathedral, but rather to diffuse their video through social media to create an incident”.
The bishop was not able to confirm if such seditious acts could be repeated from the part of this schismatic group. He stated that the creators of the incident have a “marginal status even within the Kiev Patriarchate”. “I believe that this incident matches their cultural and spiritual level”.
According to a previous report from the Ukrainian Orthodox Journalists (UOJ), about 200 people led by a priest from the unrecognized Kiev Patriarchate tried to conduct a church service inside the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra. They physically assaulted the monks who tried to stop them.
Sources
http://uoj.org.ua/novosti/sobytiya/episkop-irpenskiy-kliment-sluzhba-upts-kp-v-kievskoy-lavre-eto-provokatsiya-marginalov-
http://uoj.org.ua/novosti/sobytiya/kievskiy-patriarkhat-i-volontery-zanyali-uspenskiy-sobor-lavry-i-proveli-15-minutnuyu-sluzhbu
http://ria.ru/religion/20170313/1489892493.html