Kiev's push to inventory the UNESCO site's sacred relics is "blasphemous," a UOC bishop has said

Ukrainian government officials and police have broken into the catacombs of the country's most important monastery, the Union of Orthodox Journalists (UOJ) has reported. The caves of Kiev Pechersk Lavra are the final resting spot of some of the country's earliest Christian saints.

The Lavra, which was founded in around 1050, has been the epicenter of religious and political turmoil in recent years. The government of Vladimir Zelensky supports the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU), which was created in 2018 and has been trying for months to wrest control of the monastery and countless other church properties from the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC).

The Ukrainian culture ministry had set up a special commission tasked with creating an inventory and evaluating the sacred relics kept at the monastery's Near and Far Caves. The commission is expected to complete its work by the end of May and the results will be classified.

The UOJ said on its Telegram channel on Friday that the representatives of the ministry and police officers "have begun the takeover" of the caves at Kiev Pechersk Lavra. They used an angle grinder to cut down the padlocks which had been placed on the doors of the underground facilities by UOC monks.

Bishop Gedeon Makarovsky of the UOC told RIA Novosti that Kiev's push to make an inventory of the relics is "blasphemous."

"Why would they make a list of the relics? In order to be able to take them out, hide them, steal them, move them and so on," the cleric insisted.

When asked to comment on the actions of the Ukrainian authorities, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told RIA Novosti: "The Viy has returned to Kiev." The Viy is a demonic creature from a classic 1835 story of the same name by Ukrainian-born Russian writer Nikolay Gogol which is depicted as rampaging through a church.

The persecution of the UOC by the Ukrainian authorities intensified after the conflict between Moscow and Kiev escalated in February 2022. Zelensky justified the clampdown by alleging that the religious organization retained ties to the Moscow Patriarchate, despite it declaring full independence in May 2022.

Zelensky has asserted the need to protect Ukraine's "spiritual independence" and deprive Russia of an opportunity to "to manipulate the spirituality of our people."

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Several churches have been seized by force from the Ukrainian Orthodox Church since the conflict escalated, and criminal cases have been opened against its clerics. A law banning the activities of the UOC in Ukraine officially came into force last September.