Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has replied to an electronic petition calling for the termination of the lease of the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra monastery by the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate (UOC MP) and its handover to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU).
By law, all state property is managed by the government of Ukraine, the president said.
Under clause 1 Article 5 of the Ukrainian law “On managing the government property” such property is managed by the government of Ukraine which determines where it manages such property itself and where such management is delegated to other entities, the president’s reply to the petition said.
Under clause 5 of Article 116 of the national constitution, the government manages state property as provided by the law, Zelensky said.
“The government’s economic mandate under the law on managing state property, including corporate rights, delegating certain powers to run such property to ministries and other central-government agencies are determined by the law ‘On the Ukrainian cabinet of ministers’ (paragraph 4 clause 1 section 1 Article 20),” he said.
By April 29, the e-petition gathered 25,000 votes, enough for it to be examined.
“For a thousand years the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra has been one of the greatest shrines of the Ukrainian people. The Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) is an autocephalous Orthodox Church in Ukraine [UAOC], the 15th in the diptych. The Church of Constantinople regards the OCU as the sole canonical successor to Kyiv Mitropolia. The OCU was formed as a result of a merger of three Ukrainian Orthodox churches: the UOC KP [Kyiv Patriarchate’s], the UAOC and the UOC MP. It is quite fair that the spiritual shrine should be used by the Orthodox denomination which has been recognized by the Orthodox world as an autocephalous Orthodox church in Ukraine,” reads the petition, which was published on the presidential website on April 15.
