Head of OCU performs first monastic vows in Kyiv Cave Monastery

For the first time since the occupation of the Holy Dormition Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra, the head of the OCU, Epiphany Dumenko, took monastic vows in the monastery. The religious event took place on the evening of March 15, 2026, in the cave church of St. Anthony of the Caves, access to which was previously restricted to the clergy and believers of the UOC. This is reported by Pomisna.info.

The tonsure was performed on the OCU cleric Oleksandr Bezkrovnyi, who was named in honor of St. Barlaam, hegumen of the Caves, and on the graduate of the Theological Academy of the OCU Maxim Palaginin, who took the name of St. Spyridon, the prosphoric monk of the Caves. The event took place in the Near Caves of the Kyiv Cave Monastery, in an underground church in honor of St. Anthony of the Caves.

Dumenko wished the new monks of the OCU “God’s help and zeal so that they would continue with dignity the thousand-year monastic tradition of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra, where the monks Barlaam and Spyridon, whose names they have taken, ascended to the priesthood.”

As reported earlier, Yaroslav Yasenets, a former cleric of the OCU and now a cleric of the UOC-KP, spoke about the shortage of clergy and monastics in the OCU, in particular in the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra. According to him, the Lavra, where the OCU brethren are active, has not seen any new monastic orders recently, while the UOC is constantly receiving new monks.