OCU cleric urges to expel monks from Lavra under "wartime laws"

OCU cleric Heorhiy Kovalenko. Photo: a screenshot from the Ukrainska Pravda YouTube channel

OCU cleric Heorhiy Kovalenko said in an interview with Ukrainska Pravda that legal proceedings concerning the Ukrainian Orthodox Church should be conducted taking into account “wartime adjustments.”

In his opinion, the first-instance court ruling to terminate the contract with the monastery should have been enforced immediately, with all further proceedings moved to the stage of "after the actual eviction."

"For some reason, our judicial proceedings in wartime are conducted according to peacetime principles," the OCU cleric lamented. "I am not saying that judicial proceedings are unnecessary, but it seems to me that there should be some wartime adjustments." He emphasized that the existence of a first-instance court ruling is already sufficient grounds for expelling the monks: "It must be enforced, and then let us appeal it, discuss it, and so on and so forth."

Kovalenko also accused UOC lawyers of deliberately prolonging the process through procedural challenges and counterclaims, asserting that their goal is to "drag it out, stretch it, and wait until the moment of negotiations or the end of the war."

The spokesman for Dumenko's structure referred to the monastery's monks as "waiters" [those who are waiting], calling on state authorities to speed up their forced eviction: "There are certainly people there who can be called 'waiters.' They are waiting for 'liberators'... Well, then, let’s help them become marginalized."

In his remarks, the OCU cleric called the canonical Church a “Soviet KGB structure of Stalin-era vintage,” and the faithful "a special type of people – Christo-Chekists." Mocking the spiritual bond of the faithful with the Patriarchal Church, he added: "There is Rosgaz, Rosneft, and then there is Rosgrace. The tap of grace is in Moscow."

Previously, Heorhiy Kovalenko advised UOC faithful to pray in destroyed churches so that they would "not trust Russian propaganda."

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