Lavra's abbot comments on meeting with ex-Metropolitan Alexander

Lavra’s abbot and ex-Metropolitan Alexander (Drabinko). Photo: Drabinko's Instagram

Metropolitan Pavel, the abbot of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra, commented for the UOJ on his meeting with ex-Metropolitan Alexander (Drabinko), which took place on 23 November 2023.

"Vladyka Alexander, although he is under a ban, he is not defrocked, yesterday he came to me, and gave me his Gospel in Ukrainian," said the Lavra’s abbot.

The bishop said that Drabinko and he did not discuss ecclesiastical issues, because "the Church has said its word".

"We plunged into the memories of our trips – to Holy Mount Athos, his monastic tonsures on Athos. And I didn't hear any resentment from his lips against anyone. I think that he has sadness in his heart for the time when we were together. He has great respect for Metropolitan Onuphry and our episcopate," Metropolitan Pavel said.

According to him, their conversation was very long.

"When Vladyka asked what my vision of the future is, I answered that our holy Catholic Church of Christ was, is and will be, and these newly appeared "churches".... The time will come and they will descend from the church sky. Because everything that is not God's..... Remember what Gamaliel said: "What is not God's will be destroyed, but if God's - it is hard to go against," said the bishop.

According to the metropolitan, after this meeting, he has already been dubbed a "traitor" on the Internet.

"I was, am and will be loyal to my Catholic canonical Orthodox Church. I was under the omophorion of His Beatitude Metropolitan Volodymyr, today I am under the omophorion of my Primate His Beatitude Metropolitan Onuphry, who has done and is doing everything for our Church to have the holy status," the abbot noted and recalled that he was at all of Drabinko's consecrations: both deacon, priest and bishop.

"And I would like this man not to die. I hope and believe and pray – I told him so – that you return to the bosom of the Mother Church. Not the Moscow Church, not the Turkish Church, but your own - in which you were born. The founder of your life – I told him so – was His Beatitude Metropolitan Volodymyr," the Metropolitan said.

"I am grateful to God, and I will be happy if Vladyka Alexander wants to return to the bosom of the Mother Church, where he was born, where he will again have communion with His Beatitude Metropolitan Onuphry," the hierarch concluded.

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