Caves Icon of the Mother of God male skete

The Caves Icon of the Mother of God male skete is a house of the Kyiv Holy Dormition Caves Lavra, in the Korchuvate locality of the Holosiivskyi district of Kyiv^{1, 2}. Its core is the Lavra's monastic cemetery, and on its grounds stands the skete's main church, consecrated in honour of that icon with Saints Anthony and Theodosius standing³.

In 2009 a decision of the Kyiv city administration allotted the Lavra a plot of land in the Holosiivskyi district of Kyiv for laying out, running and maintaining a cemetery for the burial of the monastery's brethren; in the same year the design of a cemetery church in honour of the Caves Icon of the Mother of God began to be drawn up¹.

The first burials of monks of the Caves monastery in the new cemetery took place in 2010: the Lavra's brother monk Tymofii died after a long illness in the night before 31 July, and the brethren accompanied him on his last journey to the Lavra's cemetery in Korchuvate⁴.

On 26 September 2011, with the blessing of the Primate of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, His Beatitude Metropolitan Volodymyr, the vicegerent of the Lavra performed the rite of laying a memorial capsule in the foundation of the cemetery church¹.

The design was drawn up by the architects Oleksandr Molozh and Artem Proshchenko: a four-domed church in the Baroque style, 25 metres high and holding 150 worshippers¹. The need for a church at the old cemetery in Korchuvate, as the Lavra wrote at the time, had long been felt - the departed monks of the Lavra and the townspeople alike were to be given their funeral service here before burial¹.

On 7 December 2013 the Primate of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, His Beatitude Metropolitan Volodymyr, visited the new monastic cemetery, consecrated the cupola crosses for the church then under construction and served a memorial litia for the departed brethren of the monastery^{5, 2}.

The skete was opened in April 2015, on the feast of the Annunciation of the Most Holy Mother of God: the vicegerent of the Lavra served a moleben and, addressing the brethren and the parishioners, said that the new house already had its first residents⁶.

On 16 February 2017 the Spiritual Council of the Lavra, headed by the vicegerent, inspected the newly built and painted church of the skete⁷, and on the evening before the consecration the Information and Education Department of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church announced that on the following day the Primate would lead the Divine Liturgy at the skete⁸.

On 19 February 2017, the Sunday of the Last Judgment, the Primate of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church performed the rite of consecration of the skete's main church, beside which the brethren's cemetery lies, and led the Divine Liturgy in it^{9, 10}. Church awards were presented to the benefactors who had put their efforts into building the church^{9, 10}.

On 7 May 2019, on Radonitsa, the vicegerent of the Lavra served a panikhida for the departed brethren in the skete's church and consecrated a memorial cross erected in memory of the reposed monks of the Kyiv Caves monastery¹¹. The iconostasis of the skete's main church was consecrated by the vicegerent before a Divine Liturgy¹².

On 17 March 2018 the vicar of the Kyiv Metropolia, Archbishop Ilarii (Shyshkovskyi) of Makariv, who had died the day before, was given his funeral service in the Dormition Cathedral of the Lavra and was buried in the brethren's cemetery at the skete¹³.

On 1 June 2020 the Primate of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church performed the funeral rite at the skete for Mykhailo Lytvynenko, an Honoured Art Worker of Ukraine, a church composer and precentor who in 1992-2008 was precentor at the Kyiv Caves Lavra; he was buried in the same brethren's cemetery¹⁴.

As the Lavra describes it, the skete is a special place both for the brethren of the monastery and for its many parishioners and pilgrims, because many residents of the monastery and deeply believing people who made a significant contribution to the establishment of the Orthodox Church in Ukraine have found their rest here; services are held on Saturdays and Sundays³.