Packing Kyiv’s 1,000-year-old Lavra Cathedral for Orthodox Christmas, hundreds of worshippers heard the service in that church in the Ukrainian language for the first time in decades, a demonstration of independence from the Russian Orthodox Church.
The cathedral. built about 1,000 years ago then rebuilt in the 1990s after being ruined in World War II, had been under control of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which formerly had ties with the Russian Orthodox Church.
“It’s an amazing moment. Previously this place — on Ukrainian territory, within Kyiv — has been linked to Moscow. Now we feel this is ours, this is Ukrainian. This is part of the Ukrainian nation,” said Alex Fesiak, who attended the service. Metropolitan Epiphanius, the primate of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, spoke not just about Christmas but delivered a political message about the war.
Natalia Levshyna said her husband couldn’t come to the Christmas service as he is fighting on the front line, but she will send him photos of the service as it’s very important to him. Originally from Donbas, she said she stopped attending the church of the Moscow Patriarchate in 2014, when Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula and supported the conflict in the eastern part of Ukraine.
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