The Pochaiv Lavra has been an important spiritual and ideological centre of Eastern Orthodoxy until 1720, then of Greek Catholicism until 1831, after which it returned into the Russian Orthodox fold.

In December 2023, after years of disputes,[2][3] a ruling by the Supreme Court of Ukraine deprived the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) of its prior control of the monastery.

Formerly associated with the printing house of Prince Ostrogski, Zalizo established a press in Pochaiv in 1630, which supplied all of Galicia and Volhynia with Ruthenians Orthodox theological literature.

During his time in office, the monastery had to fend off incessant attacks by Hoyska's heirs, notably Andrzej Firlej, Castellan of Belz, who sued the monks over his grandmother's bequest.

During the Zbarazh War of 1675, the cloister was besieged by the Turkish Army, who reputedly fled upon seeing the apparition of the Theotokos accompanied with angels and St Job.

According to some sources, Feofan Prokopovich, a Ruthenian reformer of the Russian Orthodox Church, took monastic vows in Pochaiv; he subsequently visited the monastery with his sovereign, Peter the Great, in 1712.

However it was only nine years later, in 1831, after the Greek-Catholic support for the November Uprising, that Nicholas I of Russia ordered the cloister be given to the adherents of the Russian Orthodox Church.

The monastery was reconsecrated as an Orthodox entity under the communion of the Moscovite Patriarchy on 10 October 1831, ending 110 years of Greek-Catholic monastic life.

Its politically symbolic image as a western forepost of imperial Orthodoxy (being only several kilometres from the Greek Catholics in Austrian-ruled Galicia) was widely used in propagating Pan-slavism.

After the Russian October Revolution of 1917, another looting by Bolsheviks, the short-lived Ukrainian movements, and the Polish–Soviet War in 1920, western Volhynia was transferred to Poland under the terms of the Peace of Riga.

This new St. Job of Pochaev Brotherhood moved from Czechoslovakia to Germany and eventually America, where it joined the Holy Trinity Monastery near Jordanville, New York, with now-Archbishop Vitaly becoming its abbot.

It was not to be, although the Lavra was thoroughly searched, the monastic livestock, orphanage and other communal services which it provided to the local community were promptly confiscated, the sheer numbers of visitors prevented the Soviets taking immediate action against a place that once again had become a refuge for Orthodoxy.

Whilst being a very visible centre of Orthodoxy prevented the Lavra from taking such an active role as it potentially could, nevertheless it did provide refuge to the local population from Nazi persecution.

"[citation needed] Following the war, the Lavra was situated on a territory which contained the largest concentration of Orthodox parishes in the USSR.

However the post-war permissive attitude towards religion in the Soviet Union promptly ended with the new Thaw policy of Nikita Khrushchev in the late 1950s.

[11] Yet despite this pressure the Lavra survived closure, and by the end of the 1970s was the main theological centre of Moscow Patriarchy's Ukrainian Exarchate in the Russian Orthodox Church.

Because the Lavra's rise from Soviet persecution coincided with these events, its politico-historical position as a forepost of Orthodoxy in Western Ukraine was once again unveiled.

[11][14] In July 2014, the Ternopil Oblast Council initiated an appeal to Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk to rescind the lease and to return the monastery buildings to the Preserve.

In April 2015, the regional council voted to petition Yatsenyuk, and his Cabinet to take the monastery out of the hands of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) and turn it into a museum.

[17][14] In February 2023 the Ternopil Oblast Council created a working group studying the legality of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) leasing the Lavra complex.

[14] The following month the Orthodox Church of Ukraine asked to allocate premises of the Lavra to them "for monastic life, liturgy and other religious activities.

Amphilochius of Pochaiv (in world Yakiv Holovatyuk 1894 - 1971) was born on 27 November 1894 in the village Mala Ilovytsya, in Shumsk raion of Ternopil Oblast in western Ukraine.

The lavra is dominated by the Dormition Cathedral, conceived by Nicholas Potocki as the largest of Greek-Catholic churches and constructed between 1771 and 1783 to designs by the German architect Gottfried Hoffmann.

After the Greek-Catholic clergy reverted to Orthodoxy, the rich and refined interior of the cathedral had to be completely renovated in order to conform to traditional Orthodox requirements.

The cathedral's austere exterior is based on medieval Northern Russian architecture, while the porches feature Symbolist mosaics and paintings by Nicholas Roerich.