The wounds of division among the Orthodox pilgrims in Donbas
The autocephalous "schism" was long overdue, since the beginning of the clashes, "since the illegality became the norm, to the point of reducing the Church to a bacchanal, but maybe it's good, so we can weed out the weeds". The intolerant radicalism of the Orthodox in the Donbass is a consequence of the profound rift that occurred between the people of these territories, who went through countries, families and churches, turning even their closest relatives into bitter enemies.
The monks of Sviatohirsk remain neutral on the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. But they deprecate the "satanic schism" of Constantinople consummated with the granting of autocephaly to the patriarchate of Kyiv. Today, Putin celebrates five years since the annexation of Crimea in Sevastopol.
A correspondent for the Russian website Lenta.ru, Igor Rotar, went to a monastery in Donbass, the Ukrainian region where fighting continues in the "hybrid war" between Russia and Ukraine, five years from the beginning of the conflict.
As a pilgrim he tried to understand how people live, and above all how the faithful divided between the two Churches, now formally separated, practice the Orthodox faith. For the record, Russian President Vladimir Putin is expected today in Sevastopol, in the Crimea, to celebrate the five years since the annexation of the peninsula to Russia.
The monastery Rotar visited is located in Sviatohirsk, a name that means "the holy mountains", to evoke the homeland of all Orthodox monasticism, Mount Athos. It is located in the part of the region tormented by clashes, near the city of Slavjansk, and is a well-known sanctuary also outside Ukraine.
It is a "Lavra", like the most famous monasteries of the Caves of Kyiv and Pochayiv, that is a set of more churches and communities inspired by the "idioritmia", the diversity of grades and ascetic practices among the different groups of monks, very typical of Russian-Ukrainian monasticism.
Svjatohirsk was famous throughout the territory of the Russian Empire; it was visited by Anton Chekhov, the great atheist writer in search of answers, and by many other artists and writers, such as Fedor Tjutcev, Ivan Bunin and Marina Tsvetaeva.
In August 2014, the Russian singer Andrej Makarevich, guitarist of the famous Mashina Vremeni group, came here to visit the refugees who were fleeing Russian bombs, and for this he was declared an enemy of the homeland in Moscow. It is said that the deposed President Viktor Janukovich was in hiding here for a few days, before February 2014. He now lives in Moscow in a dacha offered by Putin.
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