On February 2, The Chairman of the Ternopil Regional Council, Mykhailo Golovko, met with representatives of the province of the Holy Savior of the Basilian Fathers in Ukraine, Fr. Ivan Shkolik CHSVV archpriest and Joseph Kralka CHSVV adviser to the archpriest.
This is stated on the Facebook page of the Basilian province of the Most Holy Savior in Ukraine.
The meeting participants discussed the ownership of the cultural and religious pilgrimage center of the Pochayiv Holy Dormition Lavra. The Fathers expressed the position of the Basilian order, according to which the monks of the monastery voluntarily accepted unity with Rome, and from 1712 to 1831, the shrine belonged to the Uniate Greek Catholic Church and was the seat of the chief abbot of the order – the Archimandrite, and was transferred to another denomination by force.
The archpriest handed over a letter from His Beatitude Sviatoslav about the return of the shrine to the bosom of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church.
The Basilian monks consider the shrine to be the center of the awakening of the identity of our people, a symbol of the revival of the Ukrainian Church.
The fathers noted that the heyday of the shrine occurred in the XVIII-XIX centuries: the majestic Assumption Cathedral was built, and buildings were erected separately – the Church of St. Job of Pochayiv, the monastery buildings, the bishop's House. The famous Pochaev wonderworking icon of the Most Holy Theotokos was crowned by Pope Clement XIV in 1773, and at that time, even earlier than Ivan Kotlyarevsky's Aeneid, literature in spoken Ukrainian was published in the monastery's printing house.
As noted, the Ukrainian people and churches in Ukraine need to look for something that unites us, not divides us, taking care of the triumph of Justice. It would be advisable to denounce the lease agreement with the current tenant, which was concluded for a period until 2054 and return the buildings of the shrine to their rightful owners, those who built the structures and gave the main impetus to the development of the monastery. This is how spiritual representatives see the solution to the problem around the Lavra.
Considering the official opinion of the UGCC on this issue, the chairman of the Ternopil Regional Council noted that the first task considers the need to ban the Moscow Patriarchate in Ukraine, which acts as a branch of the hostile political system and special services, to expel the fifth column, to overcome first of all the spiritual enemy – the cause of discord. And then, the state, through the relevant ministries, in dialogue with society, will determine which property to return to which denomination to satisfy truth and Justice.