Vicar Pavlo Lebid ordered to paint an icon with his own image on the upper choirs of the Holy Assumption Cathedral of the Kyiv Pechersk Monastery. The head of the UOC, Metropolitan Onufriy, and Metropolitan Volodymyr Sabodan were included in the "Host of Saints" during their lifetime.
Source: Bigkyiv
The panagias on the mitres of two Metropolitans feature the face of Christ. However, such kind of an image cannot be considered a picture with portraits of ministers still alive and not canonized by the church, which is painted on the temple premises – the course was rather taken to create an icon of the three saints.
"Why do you think he is suffering so much? Just look at the fragment of the painting on the upper choirs of the Assumption Cathedral... Maybe because his "alter ego" is represented there," said priest of the OCU Andriy Ponomarenko.
If we postpone the search for a definition of whether such a perpetuation of the living in the church is sacrilege, it is worth recalling that the Holy Assumption Cathedral was built at the expense of Prince Svyatoslav II Yaroslavich and Theodosius of the caves in 1078. Due to the fact that the cathedral belongs to the complex of the National Kyiv-Pechersk historical and Cultural Reserve, in 2014 Lithuanians requested the possibility of restoring the tombstone monument to Prince Konstantin Ivanovich Ostrozhsky, which was located in the Holy Assumption Cathedral. The shrine was decorated in the XVII century in the Ukrainian baroque style – mosaics and frescoes. Obviously, Pavlo Lebid did not ask permission from the city community and the Ukrainian people for his own edits in the decoration.
Former Archdeacon of the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra Sasha Bakay said that this is not the only" icon " with the image of Pavel Lebed on the church territory. In the Holy Assumption Cathedral, the vicar is drawn in the rank of Abbots/Vicars. There is another painting with Paul in the academic Church of the Nativity. But he doesn't look like himself there," Bakay said.
The academic church, which is officially the Church of the Kyiv Theological Academy and seminary, is located in distant caves. It was built in 1696 at the expense of a relative of Hetman Ivan Mazepa, Colonel Konstantin Mokievsky, it is an architectural monument and is also an example of the Ukrainian baroque. In 1817, the church was painted in the academic style by Ivan Kvyatkovsky.