Does the state now decide who is depicted on church frescoes?
The last few days have turned the Lavra reserve’s actions and words into a flashpoint of public outrage.
First came the photos and videos of reserve staff hauling the reliquaries with the relics of the Venerable Fathers of the Caves out of the catacombs and performing strange manipulations with them. Then followed an image showing those same reliquaries dumped on the floor in some corridor, alongside banana crates and half-finished coffee cups.
And now, the head of the reserve, Kotliarevska, has made a shocking announcement: as part of “derussification,” a number of frescoes in the Dormition Cathedral will be destroyed and replaced with new ones. She made it clear that the “derussification” would target frescoes depicting Metropolitan Onuphry, the late Metropolitan Volodymyr (the reposed primate of the UOC), and the Lavra’s abbot, Metropolitan Pavel. We will not ask what connection these hierarchs – all of them ethnic Ukrainians – are supposed to have with Russia. Let us note something else.
According to Kotliarevska, it will be a “scientific council” that decides who exactly will be painted on the frescoes of the Dormition Cathedral. In other words, people with no relation to the Church whatsoever.
First the museum workers rummage through the reliquaries of the Venerable Fathers, and now they presume to dictate how the churches should be painted. What comes next? Will the Ministry of Culture staff appoint whom to canonize and whom not? Will they instruct the Church whom to commemorate at the Great Entrance?
Although, one suspects that for Dumenko, as for the Ministry of Culture, the answer will always be nothing but a resounding “yes.”
